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UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFORKSI 


LOS  ANGELES 
UBRARX 


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QUEEN    MARIE    OF    ROUMANIA 


Eminent  Europeans 

Studies  in  Continental  Reality 


By 
Eugene  S.  Bagger 


With  Portraits 


G.    P.   Putnam's   Sons 

New    York    and    London 
Zbc  IktxtcUerbocUer  press 


5  9437 


Copyright,  igii, 

by 
Eugene  S.  Bagger 


Published.  November,  1922 
Second  Printing,  March,  1923 


^\^ 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


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in 

5^ 


PREFACE 

Much  publicity  has  called  to  life,  too  much 
publicity  has  destroyed  Central  Europe  for  the 
English-reading  peoples.  Prior  to  the  World  War 
those  peoples  had  a  vague  notion,  founded  entirely 
on  implicit  belief  in  the  honesty  of  mapmakers,  that 
there  were  countries  called  Austria,  Hungary, 
Roumania;  a  learned  minority  cherished  schoolday 
memories  suggesting  the  potentiality  of  a  land 
named  Greece,  where  marble  ruins  and  archaeolo- 
gists led  a  dreary  sort  of  symbiotic  existence ;  and  it 
was  recalled  of  Bohemia  that  its  most  interesting 
feature  was  a  seaboard  which  could  not  be  found. 
The  conflagration  of  1914  illuminated,  for  a  mo- 
ment, the  landscape  stretching  between  the  Rhine 
and  the  Black  Sea;  but  the  sense  of  reality  thus 
evoked  was  presently  wiped  out  by  the  vast  black 
clouds  of  Propaganda.  The  lands  whose  main 
artery  is  the  Danube  became  fixed  in  one's  con- 
sciousness as  mysterious  caverns  whence  emanated 
atrocities,  unpronounceable  proper  names,  informa- 
tion bureaus,  national  councils,  and  pamphlets, 
pamphlets,  pamphlets,  pamphlets.  Then  followed 
the  period  of  self-determination;  and  before  long 


iv  PREFACE 

the  English-reading  pubhc  self-determined  that  it 
was  sick  of  Central  European  pamphlets  and  what- 
ever they  stood  for. 

Yet  to  me,  a  native  of  the  fair  city  of  Budapest, 
the  causes  expounded  by  those  pamphlets  indicated 
realities — all  the  more  real  because  I  could  view 
them  from  the  perspective  of  prolonged  absence. 
It  is  a  commonplace  to  say  that  one  discovers  things 
by  getting  away  from  them.  When  I  lived  at 
Budapest — and  I  lived  there  the  first  twenty-one 
years  of  my  life, — I  did  not  know  that  there  ex- 
isted such  a  thing  as  Central  Europe.  I  had  to 
come  to  America  to  discover  Central  Europe.  Like 
all  awakening  to  the  obvious  hitherto  obscured  by 
its  very  obviousness,  the  discovery  meant  a  revela- 
tion. 

But  what  interested  me  in  those  pamphlets  and 
other  printed  matter  was  not  the  Causes — it  was  the 
peoples  behind  them,  or  rather,  people.  I  realized 
that  I  knew  from  first-hand  experience  that  which 
most  Americans  and  Englishmen  accepted  as  an  act 
of  faith:  that  those  peoples,  those  people,  lived. 

Now,  if  the  peoples  of  Central  Europe  became 
unreal  to  Americans  and  Englishmen  because  they 
were  disguised  as  Causes,  the  personalities  of  Cen- 
tral Europe  became  still  more  unreal  because  they 
were  disguised  as  Symbols.  There  is  less  distance 
between  a  People — itself  a  collective  being,  a 
generalization — and  a  Cause,  than  between  a  Per- 
sonality— something  concrete,  if  only  in  the  crudest 
sense  palpable — and  a   Symbol.     My  profession 


PREFACE  V 

thrust  upon  me  the  duty  of  reading  hundredweights 
of  literature — pamphlets,  books,  magazine  and 
newspaper  articles,  dealing  with  the  leaders  of  Cen- 
tral Europe.  Some  of  these  literary  products  were 
well-informed  and  informing;  others  were  too-well- 
informed  and  misinforming;  some  were  well- 
written,  others  were  not;  most  of  them  may  have 
served  the  specific  purpose  of  the  moment,  usually 
connected  with  some  sort  of  Drive;  but  whatever 
their  other  qualities  may  have  been,  they  hardly  ever 
made  one  suspect  that  the  persons  discussed  had, 
among  other  things,  souls.  These  persons  were 
banners  or  at  best  standard-bearers;  they  were 
archangels  or  devils;  they  were  vessels  of  political 
theories  and  principles,  tokens  of  interests  and 
preferences,  sometimes  dummies  clothed  in  "human 
interest"  anecdotes — human  beings  they  were  not. 
I  read  the  biographies  of  a  few — excellent  speci- 
mens of  political  philology,  warehouses  of  cold 
storage  information — too  many  trees,  of  the  forest 
not  a  trace. 

In  the  following  papers  I  have  attempted  to  pre- 
sent some  of  the  men,  and  one  woman,  who  for  the 
past  eight  years  signified  Central  European  history, 
as  human  beings,  and  not  as  symbols  and  political 
abstractions.  I  did  not  have  to  go  very  far  before 
I  realized  the  difficulties  of  my  task — difficulties 
not  specific,  indeed,  but  generic — inherent  in  the 
drawing  of  "contemporary  portraits"  of  a  higher 
than  the  Simday  supplement  plane.  Its  successful 
performance  would  have  postulated  a  manifold 


vi  PREFACE 

equipment,  involving  the  arts  of  the  journalist,  the 
historian  and  the  novelist.  It  would  have  required 
the  journalist's  sense  for  the  topical,  the  trenchant 
detail,  for  the  manipulation  of  the  subtle  threads 
with  which  things  remote  geographically  and 
psychologically  are  embroidered  upon  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  hurried  reader.  The  historian  was  called 
upon  to  contribute  perspective,  the  faculty  of  sifting 
evidence,  and  the  sense  of  connections.  At  least  as 
important  as  these  would  have  been  the  novelist's 
gift  of  re-creating  reality  from  mere  material.  Se- 
lection of  the  essential,  suppression  of  the  irrele- 
vant: in  this  highest  precept  of  all  art  the  three 
requirements  converged. 

Such  was  the  nature  of  my  undertaking.  I  owe 
an  apology  for  the  result — not  for  the  plan  and  the 
aspiration.  If  I  missed  my  mark,  at  least  it  was 
because  I  aimed  too  high — not  too  low.  That  may 
be  no  excuse  for  the  rifleman;  but  the  writer  may 
plead  it  in  extenuation. 

Comparisons  are  invidious — especially  so  for 
the  weaker  party  compared.  I  am  aware  of  the 
handicap  that  my  book  carries  in  its  title.  But  the 
book  had  been  written  before  the  title  was  thought 
of;  it  was  chosen  because  it  covers  what  it  should. 
No  intelligent  and  fair-minded  critic  will  charge  me 
with  the  desire  to  outdo  Mr.  Lytton  Strachey.  It 
was  only  when  most  of  my  chapters  were  already 
typed  that  I  awoke  to  two  facts.  First,  that  I  tried 
to  see  and  to  present  in  a  new  light  things  whose 
poignancy  had  worn  off  by  custom  and  repetition. 


PREFACE  vii 

Second,  that  I  tried  to  write  fragments  of  contem- 
porary history  with  the  methods  and  intentions  of, 
not  the  chronicler  nor  the  special  pleader,  but  the 
analytical  novelist,  only  working  upon  historic  fact 
and  document  instead  of  imaginary  material.  In 
other  words,  I  was  interested  in  psychology  and 
environment  rather  than  in  plots  and  events.  My 
book  turned  out  to  be  a  faint  attempt  at  dealing 
with  a  problem  in  literary  form  which  had  been  al- 
ready so  brilliantly  solved.  So  much  the  worse  for 
my  book. 

There  will  be  those  who  object  to  the  limitation 
of  this  volume  to  personalities  from  the  compara- 
tively unimportant  countries  of  Central  and  South- 
eastern Europe.  Now,  treating  an  ignored  subject, 
or  the  ignored  aspects  of  a  subject  (and  despite 
tons  of  wartime  press  output.  Central  Europe  is 
ignored)  may  be  quite  as  important  as  elucidating 
new  shades  of  a  known  one.  But  that  is  a  defence 
of  my  theme,  not  of  my  title.  The  fact  is — and  here 
I  touch  upon  an  idea  which  will  recur  in  the  subse- 
quent pages — that  in  a  sense  Hungarians,  Czechs, 
Roumanians  are  better  Europeans,  are  more  Euro- 
pean, than  Englishmen  or  Frenchmen.  England 
is  a  world ;  so  is  France ;  but  Hungary,  or  Czecho- 
slovakia, or  Roumania,  are  mere  segments  of  the 
whole  called  Europe. 

To  the  two  chapters  wherein  printed  sources  were 
extensively  used — those  on  M.  Venizelos  and  King 


viii  PREFACE 

Constantiiie — bibliographies  are  appended;  in  the 
others,  (juotations  are  credited  in  the  text.  As 
regards  the  two  Hellenic  chapters  I  must  make 
special  mention  here  of  my  indebtedness  to  Mr. 
John  Mavrogordato,  M.A.,  whose  writings  during 
and  after  the  war,  published  in  The  New  Europe 
and  elsewhere,  have  helped  me  much  toward  an 
understanding  of  Near  Eastern  problems.  For 
valuable  suggestions  for  the  chapter  on  President 
Masaryk,  as  well  as  for  general  encouragement,  my 
sincerest  thanks  are  due  to  Professor  Herbert  Adol- 
phus  Miller  of  Oberlin  College,  Ohio.  There  are 
practically  no  books  in  the  English  language  deal- 
ing with  the  two  revolutions  and  the  counter-revo- 
lution in  Hungary.  For  information  on  these 
subjects  I  am  indebted  to  the  files  of  the  Manchester 
Giiardian  and  the  Neue  Zilrcher  Zeitung,  above  all, 
to  the  excellently  edited  organ  of  the  Hungarian 
bourgeois  refugees  in  Vienna,  the  Becsi  Magyar 
Ujsdg  (Vienna  Hungarian  Gazette).  The  facts 
relating  to  the  Hungarian  White  Terror  are  set 
forth  in  the  Report  of  the  British  Joint  Labour 
Delegation,  headed  by  Colonel  J.  C.  Wedgwood, 
M.P.,  which  visited  Hungary  in  the  spring  of 
1920.  I  take  this  occasion  to  convey  my  thanks 
to  Colonel  Wedgwood  for  his  courtesy  in  supplying 
me  with  that  most  indispensable  document. 

But  the  two  Hungarian  chapters  could  never 
have  been  written  without  the  guidance  that  I  de- 
rived from  the  ceuvre  of  Professor  Oscar  Jaszi,  the 
great  intellectual  leader  of  Young  Hungary.    My 


PREFACE  ix 

obligation  to  him  far  exceeds  the  range  of  my  quo- 
tations from  his  brilliant  book,  Magyar  Calvary — 
Magyar  Resurrection,  unavailable,  alas!  in  English. 
It  was  he  who  taught  me,  like  so  many  others  of  my 
generation,  to  understand  Hungary  in  terms  of 
European  culture  and  modern  political  science. 

The  chapter  on  Queen  Marie  of  Roumania  treats 
that  very  beautiful  and  spirited  lady  in  a  way  which 
our  best  people  might  possibly  call  unorthodox.  I 
wish  to  assure  my  numerous  Roumanian  friends — 
who  after  all  may  not  read  the  chapter  very  care- 
fully— that  whatever  I  say  about  their  Queen  is  by 
no  means  intended  to  bear  upon  their  nation.  I  was 
born  in  a  country  where  preference  for  things  Rou- 
manian is  not,  to  put  it  mildly,  a  common  tradition ; 
but  I  am  only  glad  to  state  that  years  of  study  and 
personal  contact  have  generated  in  me  a  sincere  ad- 
miration of  and  affection  for  the  spirit  of  Young 
Roumania,  that  truly  European  spirit  which  is  rep- 
resented by  men  like  M.  Octavian  Goga,  poet, 
statesman,  humanist.  If  I  have  to  confess  to  a  bias 
in  the  matter  of  Roumania,  it  is  a  distinctly  pro- 
Roumanian  bias,  born  of  my  faith  in  Young  Rou- 
mania as  the  outpost  of  Latinity  at  the  eastern  gate 
of  Europe. 

E.  S.  B. 

Baltimore,  July,  1922. 


The  chapters  on  President  Masaryk,  Dr.  Benes  and 
Admiral  Horthy  have  appeared,  in  part,  in  The  New  Repub- 
lic, The  New  York  Times  and  The  Century  Magazine 
respectively,  and  are  reprinted  here  with  the  kind  permission 
of  the  editors. 


SI 


CONTENTS 

VAGB 

I. — Queen  Marie  of   Roumania 1 

Princess  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  Duchess  in 
Saxony.  Born  October  29,  1876.  Daughter  of 
Duke  of  Edinburgh  and  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,  sec- 
ond son  of  Queen  Victoria  and  the  Prince-Consort, 
Duke  Albert  of  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.  Married  to 
Crown  Prince  Ferdinand  of  Roumania  January 
10,  1893. 

II. — King  Ferdinand   of   Roumania 25 

Of  the  House  of  Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen,  the 
eldei',  Roman  Catholic,  non-reigning  branch  of  the 
Hohenzollern  dynasty.  Born  August  24,  1865,  at 
Sigmaringen.  Succeeded  his  uncle,  King  Carol  I, 
October  10,  1914. 

III. — The  Rise  of  Eleutherios  Venizelos  ...  47 
Eleutherios  Kyriakou  Venizelos.  Born  August  23, 
1864,  at  Murniaes  near  Canea,  Island  of  Crete,  son 
of  Kyriakos  Venizelos,  a  merchant.  Doctor  of 
Laws,  University  of  Athens,  1887.  Chairman  of 
Insurrectionary  Assembly  of  Crete,  1897.  Council- 
lor of  State,  1899.  President  of  the  Hellenic 
Council,  October,  1910-March,  1915;  August,  1915 
-October,  1915.  Head  of  Salonica  Government, 
October,  1916-June,  1917.  President  of  Hellenic 
Council,  June,  1917-November,  1920.  Married 
Helena  Schilizzi  in   1921. 

IV. CONSTANTINE  AND  THE  FaLL  OF  VeNIZELOS    .       .  83 

Constantine  I,  King  of  the  Hellenes,  Prince  of  Den- 
mark. Of  the  House  of  Schleswig-Holstein-Sonder- 
burg-Gliicksburg.  Born  August  31,  1868.  Married 
Princess  Sophie  of  Prussia,  sister  of  Kaiser  Wil- 
helm,  October  28,  1889.    Succeeded  his  father,  King 


xiv  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

George  I,  March  18,  1913.  Deposed  June  12,  1917. 
Resumed  power  December  19,  1920.  Deposed 
again  Sept.  27,  1922.  Field-Marshal-General  of 
Prussia.  Colonel-in-Chief  of  88th  Royal  Prussian 
Infantry  and  of  2nd  Royal  Foot  Guards. 

V. — Thomas   Garrigue    Masaryk 125 

President  of  the  Czechoslovak  Republic.  Born  March 
7,  1850,  at  Hodonin,  Moravia,  son  of  imperial 
gamekeeper.  Lecturer  on  philosophy,  University 
of  Vienna,  1879.  Professor,  Czech  University  of 
Prague,  1882.  Member  of  Austrian  Reichsrat, 
1891.  Assumed  oflBce  as  First  President  of  the 
Czechoslovak  Republic,  November  14,  1918.  Re- 
elected for  life.  May  28,  1920.  Married  Charlotte 
Garrigue,  of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  in  1878. 

VI. — John   Bratiano,   Jr     .     .     . 143 

Born  1865.  Educated  in  Bucharest  and  fecole 
Centrale,  Paris.  Premier  of  Roumania,  1907-1910; 
June,  1914-January,  1918;  December,  1918-No- 
vember,  1919;  reappointed  January,  1922.  Married 
to  Princess  Elise  Stirbey. 

VII. — Count   Michael    Karolyi 163 

Born  March  4,  1875.  Her  :ditary  member  of  Hun- 
garian House  of  Lords.  Renounced  seat  in  Upper 
Chamber  and  got  elected  to  House  of  Representa- 
tives, 1906.  Married  to  Countess  Catherine 
Andrdssy  November,  1914.  President  of  Hun- 
garian Republic,  November,  1918-March  21, 
1919. 

VIII. — Ignace  Jan  Paderewski 211 

Born  November  6,  1860,  at  Kurylowka,  Podolia,  son 
of  a  small  noble  land-owner.  Professor,  Warsaw 
Conservatory,  1879-81.  First  concert  at  Vienna, 
1887;  at  Paris,  1888.  Prime  Minister  of  Poland, 
1918-1919.  First  married  1879,  to  Rose  Hassal, 
Warsaw,  who  died  a  year  later.  Second  wife 
H6lhne,  Baronne  de  Rosen,  1899. 


CONTENTS  XV 

PAGE 

IX. — Edward  Benes 237 

Premier  of  the  Czechoslovak  Republic.  Born  1884. 
Educated  at  Universities  of  Prague  and  Dijon,  and 
at  Sorbonne,  Paris.  Ph.D.,  University  of  Prague, 
1909.  Instructor  in  Sociology,  1912.  Foreign 
Minister  of  Czechoslovakia,  1918.  Premier,  Sep- 
tember, 1921. 

X. — Admiral   Horthy 255 

His  Serene  Highness  Nicholas  Horthy  de  Nagybdnya. 
Regent  of  Hungary.  Born  1867  at  Kenderes, 
County  Szolnok.  Educated  at  Imperial  and  Royal 
Naval  Academy,  Pola,  and  at  Vienna.  Naval 
Aide  to  Emperor  Francis  Joseph.  In  World  War 
commander  of  Imperial  and  Royal  Cruiser  Novara, 
later  Commander-in-Chief  of  Austro-Hungarian 
Navy.  Commander-in-Chief  of  Hungarian  Na- 
tional (White)  Army,  Szegedin,  in  spring  of  1919. 
Elected  Regent  March  1,  1920.  Married  to  Paula 
Purgly,  daughter  of  apothecary  at  Nagyvdrad 
(Grosswardein). 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING  PAGE 

Queen  Marie  of  Roumania Frontispiece 

King  Ferdinand  of  Roumania 28 

Eleutherios  Venizelos 50 

Kino  Constantine  of  Greece 86 

Thomas  Garrigue   Masaryk 128 

John  Bratiano,  Jr 146 

Count   Michael    Karolyi 166 

Count  Stephen  Tisza 178 

Ignace  Jan  Paderewski 214 

Edward  Benes     ....         240 

Admiral   Nicholas   Horthy 268 


But  this  I  say,  brethren,  the  time  is  short:  it  remaineth, 
that  they  that  weep  be  as  though  they  wept  not;  and  they 
that  rejoice,  as  though  they  rejoiced  not;  and  they  that 
buy,  as  though  they  possessed  not;  and  they  that  use  this 
world,  as  not  abusing  it:  for  the  fashion  of  this  world 
passeth  away. 

I.  Corinthians  7:  29-31. 


TOC 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA 


She  might  have  been  Queen  of  England. 

The  story  has  never  appeared  in  print.  It  was 
related  to  me  by  an  English  friend  who  had  heard 
it  on  a  visit  to  Bucharest,  from  one  of  the  Queen's 
most  intimate  friends.  The  latter,  in  her  turn,  had 
it  from  the  Queen  herself.  Princess  Mary  was 
sixteen  then,  the  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Edin- 
burgh, Queen  Victoria's  second  son.  It  was  on  the 
Isle  of  Wight,  and  it  was  Spring.  One  day  the 
young  Prince  George  came  to  her  and  said  in  that 
inimitable  casual  English  manner:  "Missy,  will  you 
be  my  wife?"  It  should  be  recalled  that  he  was  the 
second  son  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  The  Duke  of 
Clarence  was  still  among  the  living,  and  there  was 
nothing  to  hint  at  his  early  death,  nothing  but  the 
old  habit  of  Anglo-Saxon  fate  which  very  often  con- 
demns to  death  the  first-born.  It  is  no  bad  arrange- 
ment, in  a  way.  The  system  brings  happiness  to 
the  eldest  son  by  giving  him  the  expectancy  of  his 
estate,  and  it  brings  happiness  to  the  second  son  by 
giving  him  the  estate,  the  more  appreciated  because 
unhoped  for.    Still,  there  was  something  to  be  said 


4  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

for  being  even  the  sister-in-law  of  the  future  King 
of  England,  and  Princess  Mary  was  sixteen.  It  is 
the  age  when  girls  love  to  be  carried  off  their  feet, 
w^hen  girls  are  not  on  the  lookout  for  what  the 
French  call  un  manage  de  raison.  Why  should  she 
have  refused? 

Withal,  my  English  friend  doubted  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  story,  and  when  he  returned  to  London 
he  asked  Lord  Knollys,  King  George's  secretary, 
if  it  was  true.  It  was.  Princess  Mary  refused  to 
marry  her  first  cousin.  Without  looking  for  further, 
more  subtle,  reasons,  perhaps  that  in  itself  ex- 
plained the  refusal.  Girls  at  sixteen  ( and  not  only 
at  sixteen)  love  the  thrill  of  a  new  experience.  It 
is  difficult  for  a  girl  with  a  restless  imagination  to 
look  forward  to  her  first  cousin  for  the  thrill  of  a 
new  experience. 

As  to  King  George,  he  seems  to  have  lived  down 
his  disappointment.  One  of  the  best  husbands  in 
the  universe,  he  hardly  feels  pangs  of  regret  now. 
Perhaps  Queen  Mary  occasionally  teases  her  hus- 
band about  the  feeling  which  Queen  Marie  once 
inspired  in  him.  And,  in  a  subtle  way,  King 
George  had  his  revenge.  The  Princess  who  refused 
to  marry  the  second  son  of  the  heir  to  the  English 
crown  was  known  later  to  favour  more  than  one 
arriviste  commoner. 

The  months  passed;  then  a  year,  two  years — 
and  Princess  Mary  was  still  unmarried.  She  was 
young ;  but  she  was  not  very  happy  in  her  parents' 
home,  and  when  Prince  Ferdinand,  the  Roumanian 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA         5 

heir-apparent,  asked  her  to  become  his  bride  she 
did  not  refuse. 

Did  she  love  him?  It  was  adventure — of  a  kind. 
She  was  to  go  to  Roumania.  How  wonderful  all 
journeys  are  before  you  start!  Every  place  is  in- 
vested with  glamour  before  you  get  there.  To  a 
foreigner,  even  Hoboken,  or  Highgate,  may  sug- 
gest romantic  associations.  To  the  young  bride 
Roumania  was  a  name — and  a  sonorous  name.  It 
derived  from  a  common  root  with  Romance.  Then 
she  arrived,  and  before  long  she  felt  very  lonely 
with  her  husband,  who  appeared  selfish  and  had 
confirmed  habits  like  an  old  bachelor;  with  King 
Carol  and  Queen  Elizabeth,  who,  in  their  childless 
life,  had  lost  all  understanding  of  youth,  if  they 
ever  possessed  any. 

She  had  a  child — a  boy,  as  is  proper  in  well-regu- 
lated royal  families;  and,  twelve  months  later,  a 
daughter.  Then  she  rubbed  her  eyes,  and  looked 
around.  Suddenly  the  woman  of  twenty-one  felt  a 
strong  craving  for  life — to  be  bathed  in,  to  drink 
experience. 

It  was  not  an  especially  complicated  case.  Prin- 
cess Mary  (or,  as  she  now  spelled  her  name,  Marie) 
was  heartily  bored.  She  started  highly  unconven- 
tional friendships,  and  was  harshly  criticized  be- 
cause of  them  by  her  uncle  and  aunt,  the  King  and 
Queen,  and  by  her  subjects-to-be  who  were  nothing 
if  not  critical.  She  tried  to  ignore  criticism,  but  her 
critics  were  too  many  and  too  strong  for  her. 

All  this  happened  at  the  royal  court  of  Bucharest ; 


6  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

it  might  just  as  well  have  happened  in  a  Paris  or 
Copenhagen  flat,  in  a  suburb  of  London  or  Boston. 
Princess  Marie  was  not  the  first  wife  in  history  who 
suddenly  felt  a  desire  to  see  some  one  other  than  her 
husband  opposite  her  at  breakfast.  She  had  a  will. 
In  a  flash,  without  consulting  any  one,  she  left  her 
husband  like  Nora  of  the  Doll's  House  and  went 
off  to  Gotha,  where  her  father  was  reigning  as 
Duke.  A  few  months  later  Princess  Mignon  w^as 
born. 

There  were  those  to  whom  her  exit  was  not  un- 
welcome. Queen  Elizabeth  was  one  of  their 
number.  To  her  the  Princess  Marie  symbolized  a 
defeat — one  of  the  bitterest  of  her  life.  The  Queen 
had  desired  to  marry  her  nephew,  the  Crown  Prince, 
to  one  of  her  friends.  Mile.  Vacaresco.  She  failed. 
Princess  Marie  had  no  part  in  the  affair;  she  ap- 
peared on  the  scene  later,  when  all  was  over  but  the 
newspaper  echoes.  She  was  not  the  cause  of  the 
Queen's  defeat,  but  she  was  its  memento.  The 
Queen  hated  her,  and  was  glad  to  see  her  go. 

Some  of  the  Roumanian  politicians,  inveterate 
lovers  of  mischief,  were  equally  gratified.  But 
their  satisfaction  with  what  seemed  to  be  a  final 
break  was  thwarted  by  the  birth  of  Princess  Mig- 
non. The  Crown  Prince,  unlike  his  wife,  possessed 
a  heart.  Unlike  her,  he  also  had  a  strong  and  real 
sense  of  duty.  A  rapprochement  was  engineered. 
Princess  Marie  returned  to  her  husband  and  to  the 
court. 

This  reconciliation,  much  more  than  her  marriage, 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA         7 

was  the  turning-point  in  her  life.  When  she 
married  she  embarked  on  a  voyage  of  discovery. 
Now  she  surrendered  to  a  routine.  It  was  a  sur- 
render in  a  rather  complete  sense.  With  this  young 
princess  of  twenty-two,  locked  up  in  the  petty 
pleasures  and  sorrows  of  Roumanian  court  life  as  in 
a  gaol,  one  had  the  impression  that  hers  was  a  case 
of  arrested  development:  that  her  life  had  run  up 
against  a  wall.  That  wall  she  was  never  to  sur- 
mount. She  could  not  go  on — but  she  could  go 
around  in  a  circle,  she  could  go  back  and  forth. 
That  restlessness  which  had  made  her  decline  her 
first  cousin  was  still  in  her  blood.  It  found  an  out- 
let in  a  continuous,  untiring  activity,  an  activity 
regardless  of  results  and  consequences  and  not 
always  particular  as  to  means. 


II 


She  began  to  paint.  My  English  friend  was  in 
Bucharest  when  the  Arts  were  wooing  her.  She  said 
to  him:  "I  am  only  happy  on  days  when  I  have 
painted  for  two  hours  and  been  on  horseback  for 
two  hours."  Painters  disliked  that  remark,  but  for 
the  psychologist  it  was  a  gem.  Painting,  for  her, 
was  simply  another  form  of  exercise,  a  drain  for  her 
bursting  vitality. 

Nor  was  painting  the  end  of  it.  The  Roumanian 
court  was  a  young  court,  but  it  already  had  its 
traditions.  One  of  these  traditions  was  that  of  the 
literary   Queen.     Under  the   pen   name   Carmen 


8  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Sylva,  Queen  Elizabeth  had  written  a  number  of 
books,  and  those  books  were  not  only  published,  but 
they  also  sold.  They  delighted  many  a  snob  and 
many  a  sentimentahst,  in  Roumania  and  abroad. 
Surplus  of  energy,  boredom  and  jealousy  of  the 
older  woman  began  to  hatch  a  conspiracy  in  Prin- 
cess Marie;  and  one  fatal  day  the  conspirators 
thrust  a  weapon  into  her  hand — a  pen.  Queen 
Carmen  was  avenged  at  last.  It  was  her  example 
that  turned  Marie  into  an  author. 

The  relationship  of  kings  and  queens  to  the  Arts 
is  rather  a  pathetic  one.  It  is  not  only  that  they 
want  so  terribly  to  be  successful.  They  must  be 
successful — in  their  exalted  position  they  cannot 
afford  failure.  They  might,  of  course,  try  anonjTn- 
ity;  but  on  that  term  success  would  not  be  worth 
having.  They  crave  fame.  Being  sentimentalists, 
ex  officio,  as  it  were,  they  hate  taking  chances ;  they 
shrink,  as  ^Meredith  says  somewhere,  from  the  awful 
responsibihty  of  the  deed  done;  they  are  unac- 
customed to,  and  abhor,  the  idea  of  paying  a  price. 
Kings  and  queens  of  the  twentieth  century  may  don 
disguise  when  they  sail  forth  in  quest  of  the  grosser 
pleasures ;  but  when  they  are  out  for  literary  fame 
they  wear  their  full  regalia;  for  they  know  the 
publicity  value  of  their  crowns,  and  are  loath  to 
sacrifice  it. 

Some  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago  a  friend  of 
mine,  a  clever  Frenchman,  was  introduced,  in 
Paris,  to  King  Oscar  of  Sweden,  then  on  a 
visit  in  the  French  capital.    The  King  seemed  to 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA        9 

like  him,  and  he  was  quite  pleased,  even  a  little 
proud,  when  he  received  word  that  His  Majesty- 
wished  to  see  him.  He  felt  sure  that  the  King 
sought  the  benefit  of  his  knowledge  of  Paris  and 
the  world ;  that  he  intended  to  discuss  with  him  the 
relation  of  Sweden  to  Norway,  or  the  problem  of 
Russian  aggression,  then  the  bugbear  of  Scandi- 
navia. One  little  thing  he  forgot :  that  His  Majesty 
was  also  a  poet,  and  that  he  had  just  published  a 
volume.  He  was  reminded  of  it  soon  enough. 
When  he  arrived  the  monarch  greeted  him  most 
cordially,  and  drew  quite  close  to  him.  He  was,  in 
all  humility,  preparing  for  his  initiation  into  the 
holy  of  holies  of  European  diplomacy,  when  sud- 
denly the  question  came  from  the  sovereign  lips, — 
coaxingly,  almost  shyly: 

"Do  you  think  that  my  book  will  sell?" 
Dr.  Johnson  said  that  women  preaching  re- 
minded him  of  dogs  walking  on  their  hind  legs — 
they  did  not  do  it  well,  but  the  wonder  was  that  they 
did  it  at  all.  Queen  Marie  started  writing  books  in 
English,  and  thus  accomplished  one  of  the  miracles 
of  her  life ;  for  she  does  not  completely  master  the 
English  language,  nor  any  other  for  that  matter. 
Yet  she  neglects  no  opportunity  to  proclaim  to  the 
world  that  she  is  an  English  princess;  on  the 
slightest  provocation,  without  any  provocation  at 
all,  she  will  tell  you  that  she  is  English,  and  how 
English  she  is.  A  thoroughbred  Coburg,  she  hasn't 
a  drop  of  English  blood  in  her  veins. 

Every  religion  has  its  martyrs,  even  the  one 


10  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

whose  Bible  is  the  Book  of  Snobs.  There  are 
people — I  have  known  them — who  conscientiously 
buy  every  book  of  Queen  Marie  as  soon  as  it  is  off 
the  presses.  I  assume  that  some  of  these  zealots  also 
try  to  read  her  books,  though  I  doubt  if  any  one 
ever  succeeded  in  reading  them,  as  Daisy  Ashford 
would  say,  to  the  bitter  end. 

For  Princess  Marie  literature  was  not  a  vehicle 
of  self-expression,  not  even,  primarily,  a  road  to 
fame,  but  just  a  safety  valve,  like  her  painting, 
like  her  horseback-riding.  She  went  out  riding 
every  morning,  and  on  his  visits  to  Bucharest  my 
English  friend  repeatedly  had  the  pleasure  of  ac- 
companying her.  He  felt  the  honour  keenly,  but  his 
pleasure  was  not  unmixed.  For  she  rode  her  horse 
for  hours  and  hours  at  a  stretch,  absolutely  careless 
of  the  creature's  fatigue.  No  Englishwoman  could 
ever  do  that.  My  friend  was  told  that  no  horse 
lasted  in  the  royal  stables  over  three  or  four  months. 
"I  did  not  check  up,"  he  adds,  "the  mortality 
among  the  stenographers  to  whom  Her  Majesty 
dictated  her  books,  but  it  must  have  been  high." 


Ill 


Then  the  Princess  became  Queen ;  and  by  a  coin- 
cidence the  war  broke  out  almost  at  the  same  mo- 
ment. For  Marie  it  was  a  fortunate  coincidence. 
She  found  herself.  At  last  here  was  an  adequate 
outlet  for  her  boundless  energy,  a  field  that  could 
absorb  all  the  cloudbursts  of  her  activity.     She 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA       11 

could  now  be  "up  and  doing"  twenty-four  hours  a 
day  if  she  chose.  She  could  achieve  things — more 
than  that:  she  could  achieve  things  that  really 
mattered.  She  could  manage  men;  she  could  mould 
events.  Heretofore  she  had  to  enjoy,  in  a  degree, 
action  vicariously  in  her  fairy  tales;  now  she  could 
play  a  part  in  making  real  history.  She  wanted  to 
be  on  the  bill  all  the  time — a  "headliner,"  as 
Americans  say. 

"I  have  never  been  so  happy  as  during  the  war." 
If  Queen  Marie  never  said  that,  she  might  have  said 
it ;  if  anybody  ever  said  it,  it  was  a  woman.  One  of 
the  women  who,  "fed  up"  on  the  strenuous  futility 
called  social  life,  could  now  address  mass  meetings, 
organize  relief  societies  and  vigilance  committees, 
direct  war  loan  campaigns,  prepare  Red  Cross  sup- 
plies, even  nurse  the  wounded — anything.  No 
woman  had  a  greater  opportunity  in  the  war  than 
Queen  Marie.    She  lived  up  to  it. 

One  of  the  first  tasks  the  war  thrust  upon  her  was 
a  removal.  A  removal,  from  one  city  to  another, 
means  no  small  thing  even  in  the  ordinary  middle- 
class  household.  It  is  an  epoch-making  event  in  the 
life  of  a  court.  A  long  time  before  the  Germans 
pierced  the  Roumanian  front  a  confidential  report 
on  the  military  situation  was  demanded  from  head- 
quarters. "Is  Bucharest  menaced?"  asked  the  court. 
"Not  in  the  least,"  answered  the  generals,  in  chorus. 
Queen  Marie  is  a  shrewd  woman.  "We  must  pre- 
pare to  go  to  lassy,"  said  Her  Majesty. 

And  to  lassy  they  went.    There  was  a  shortage 


12  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

of  munitions  at  the  front,  of  food  in  the  towns,  be- 
cause there  was  a  shortage  of  rolHng  stock.  There 
were  no  cars  to  accommodate  the  refugees  from  the 
devastated  areas.  But  trains  were  commandeered 
to  transfer  to  the  royal  palace  at  lassy  all  the  con- 
tents of  the  Cotroceni  household.  All  kinds  of  me- 
diocre furniture,  worn-out  polar  bears'  skins  turned 
a  murky  grey  with  age,  cracked  Persian  pottery, 
embroideries  and  silks  snatched  up  at  Liberty's 
during  hasty  stays  in  London.  True,  Roumania 
was  at  war;  but  the  Stimmung  of  the  Bucharest 
court  had  to  be  recreated  at  lassy  at  any  cost. 

In  the  evening  little  intimate  concerts  were  given. 
Richly  painted  shades  or  heavy  pieces  of  silk  cov- 
ered the  lamps,  and  a  Roumanian  violinist,  Enesco, 
or  a  pianist,  Mme.  Cella  Delavrancea,  played  every- 
thing from  Bach  to  Debussy.  Missions  came  from 
Allied  governments,  Albert  Thomas  from  France, 
Gutchkoff,  the  Minister  of  War,  from  Russia,  to 
stimulate  Roumanian  resistance.  They  were  wel- 
come but  not  needed.  The  King  and  Queen  had 
made  up  their  minds.  The  Roumanian  armies 
would  fight  on  to  their  last  drop  of  blood. 

A  great  friend  of  Her  Majesty  once  said  to  me: 
"No  woman  was  ever  so  gifted  as  she — none,  not 
even  Sarah  Bernhardt  or  Mrs.  Fiske." 

A  curious  comparison — a  Queen  and  two  ac- 
tresses. A  truer  comparison  than  would  appear  at 
first  glance.  Queens  and  actresses  have  many  parts 
to  play.  At  lassy  Queen  Marie,  clad  all  in  white, 
with  a  diamond  cross  on  her  breast,  a  cross  of  the 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA       13 

colour  of  blood  on  the  white  veil  that  covered  her 
forehead,  visited  the  hospitals  every  morning.  In 
the  afternoon  she  gave  audiences,  either  to  native 
politicians  in  need  of  a  coaxing  word,  or  to  foreign 
diplomatists.  To  the  French  Minister,  Count  de 
St.  Aulaire,  later  Ambassador  in  London,  she  ex- 
plained what  a  wonderful  Queen  she  was — it  was 
she  who  dragged  her  hesitant  husband,  her  reluctant 
Premier,  into  the  war. 

Count  de  St.  Aulaire,  being  the  envoy  of  a  mere 
republic,  was  con\^lsed  with  the  delights  of  such 
intimate  relation  with  a  real  Queen.  He  flashed 
across  Europe  enthusiastic  dispatches;  he  said, 
adapting  the  famous  mot  of  Mirabeau,  that  there 
was  only  one  man  in  Roumania,  and  that  was  the 
Queen. 

All  of  which  was  delicious,  and  Her  Majesty  en- 
joyed it  to  the  dregs.  Now  I  don't  want  to  be 
misunderstood.  I  don't  mean  to  say  that  the 
tragedy  of  the  war  did  not  affect  her.  She  did  not 
remain  unmoved  by  its  horrors.  But  contact  with 
the  war,  and  not  the  least  with  war's  horrors,  made 
her  a  different,  and,  morally,  a  richer  woman.  She 
tasted  power.  She  liked  it,  and  in  a  weak  and  re- 
spectful country  she  was  able  to  hold  on  to  it. 

In  a  sense  her  choice  was  justified  at  last.  As 
Queen  of  England  she  would  never  have  had  the 
opportunities  to  rule,  to  control  and  initiate,  that 
now  literally  poured  into  her  lap.  The  court  was 
managed  by  polished  but  inefficient  gentlemen.  The 
generals  were  not  much  better.  One,  Mavrocordato, 


14  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

was  appointed  to  a  mission  with  the  Allied  General 
Staff  at  Salonica;  but  the  French  were  advised 
never  to  let  him  reach  his  destination,  and  they 
wisely  heeded  the  counsel.  Another,  Catargi,  was 
appointed  Minister  to  Belgium,  and  was  now  safe, 
in  more  than  one  sense,  with  King  Albert's  court 
at  Le  Havre.  Two  men  gained  the  special  con- 
fidence of  the  Queen.  The  one  was  Prince  Stir- 
bey,  a  descendant  of  former  rulers  of  Roumania. 
The  other  was  a  man  in  khaki,  the  Canadian  Colonel 
Boyle. 

Prince  Stirbey  was  not  only  a  real  prince — he 
was  the  Prince  Charming.  He  was  very  handsome 
and  very  rich ;  he  did  not  speak  much,  but  the  little 
he  said  was  good.  He  was  all  the  time  engaged  in 
far-reaching  schemes — his  one  ambition  in  this 
world  was  to  become  richer  every  day;  but  he  kept 
his  schemes  to  himself.  They  were  not  in  evidence. 
The  one  thing  that  was  in  evidence  was  his  charm, 
and  even  about  that  he  had  to  exercise  restraints. 
Who  would  have  thought  that  the  Prince  Charming 
had  a  wife  somewhere,  and  an  innumerable  host  of 
daughters?  However,  in  the  Orient  women  know 
their  place  and  keep  it.  In  any  event,  his  wife  and 
his  multitudinous  daughters  did  not  prevent  Prince 
Stirbey  from  accomplishing,  in  the  briefest  time,  a 
most  brilliant  military  career.  In  a  few  months  the 
Lieutenant  was  promoted  to  Colonel.  No  recom- 
pense is  too  big  for  charm.  Not  only  did  Prince 
Stirbey  become  the  eminence  grise,  the  power  be- 
hind  the    throne,    of   Roumania — as    the    Prime 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA       15 

Minister's  brother-in-law  he  was  an  ideal  go-be- 
tween from  court  to  the  world  of  politicians.  But 
his  position  had  its  risks — grave  ones.  Many  a 
Roumanian  lip  at  one  time  fell  into  a  shape  that 
made  you  believe  that  you  had  just  heard  or  were 
just  going  to  hear  the  word  Rasputin.  But  in  the 
Orient,  where  intrigue  was  invented,  they  have  also 
perfected  the  art  of  directing  public  attention 
where  it  belongs.  Perhaps  Prince  Stirbey  prayed 
to  the  Almighty  that  He  would  send  some  one  to 
deliver  him  from  being  the  butt  of  popular  interest. 
Perhaps  Prince  Stirbey  invented  Colonel  Boyle. 


IV 


Who  was  Colonel  Boyle?  His  admirers  called 
him  the  Colonel  Lawrence  of  Roumania,  local  ver- 
sion of  the  Oxford  archeeologist  who  became  states- 
man, strategist  and  cavalry  hero  in  Arabia.  But 
Colonel  Boyle's  relations  with  Oxford  were  less 
patent,  and  although  at  one  time  he  may  have  had 
something  to  do  with  excavating,  he  was  no  archae- 
ologist. He  came  from  Canada.  Behind  Canada 
lay  Alaska,  land  of  the  midnight  sun,  of  gold,  of 
prospecting,  of  tangled  lawsuits  about  clashing 
claims.  In  Roumania  nobody  asked  for  details. 
All  he  was  asked  was,  "Who  are  you?" 

"A  Colonel,  at  any  rate,"  answered  Boyle. 

"Why  not  become  a  hero?" 

"I  am  prepared  for  any  job  that  you  may  give 
me." 


16  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

It  was  at  the  beginning  of  the  Bolshevik  upheaval 
in  Russia.  Colonel  Boyle  was  entrusted  with  the 
task  of  freeing  a  certain  number  of  Roumanians 
from  the  grasp  of  the  Bolsheviki.  At  that  early 
stage  the  prestige  of  khaki  was  still  considerable. 
They  will  tell  you  in  Roumania  that  Colonel  Boyle 
saved  five,  fifty  or  five  hundred  lives  in  Russia.  In 
cases  like  that  it  is  always  a  question  of  appreciation 
rather  than  of  fact.  Whatever  else  his  mission  ac- 
complished, one  result  was  obvious.  Colonel  Boyle 
became  the  Queen's  slave. 

"When  I  saw  her  I  felt  like  Paul  on  the  Damas- 
cus road,"  he  is  reported  to  have  said. 

From  that  moment  on  the  Queen  utilized  him — 
sent  him  on  missions  that  required  tact  and  dis- 
cretion as  well  as  energy  and  resourcefulness.  She 
sent  him  to  rescue  her  son,  the  Crown  Prince,  from 
the  clutches  of — but  that  is  another  story.  She  sent 
him  to  try  to  get  for  her  sister,  wife  of  the  Grand 
Duke  Kyril,  the  throne  of  Russia.  Why  not?  The 
Czar  of  all  the  Russians  was  not  only  dead — he  had 
been  buried  and  lamented  in  an  article  by  Her 
Majesty  the  Queen  Marie.  And  had  she  not  the 
blood  of  Catherine  the  Great  in  her  veins?  Once 
she  was  passing  a  column  of  Russian  soldiers.  One 
exclaimed:  "There — what  a  good  Empress  she 
would  make  for  us!"  But  she  was  engaged  else- 
where. Her  sister  had  been  the  Duchess  of  Hesse. 
She  had  divorced  her  husband  in  order  to  marry  the 
Grand  Duke  Kyril  of  Russia.  They  were  both 
alive,  and  although  handicapped,  in  Orthodox  eyes, 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA       17 

by  the  matter  of  the  divorce,  still  the  nearest  claim- 
ants to  the  Russian  throne. 

Boyle  had  once  had  a  stroke  in  an  airplane,  but  he 
was  fond  of  flying  nevertheless.  He  was  sent  to  the 
Wrangel  front  to  ascertain  how  long  it  would  take 
for  Wrangel  to  reinstate  the  Romanoffs.  He  re- 
turned with  the  message  that  it  was  a  question  of 
six  months.  Six  days  later  General  Wrangel  was 
floating  quietly  toward  Constantinople,  and  the 
coronation  of  the  Grand  Duke  Kyril  was  postponed 
sine  die. 

There  is  no  use  crying  over  spilt  crowns.  A 
French  proverb  says,  "Un  amant  de  perdu,  dix  de 
retrouve."  In  a  period  of  great  upheavals  if  you 
miss  a  throne  you  may  find  another  if  you  only  look 
around  quickly  enough.  Venizelos  was  tottering  in 
Greece;  the  exchange  of  Constantine  was  rising. 
Constantine's  son  suddenly  became  a  good  match. 
Prince  Stirbey — or  was  it  Colonel  Boyle? — was 
dispatched  to  Switzerland  to  negotiate  the  marriage 
between  the  Prince  Georgios  of  Greece  and  the 
Princess  Elizabeth  of  Roumania.  The  mission  was 
crowned  with  success. 

But  that  is  rushing  too  far  ahead.  The  war  was 
still  on.  The  Germans  were  advancing,  they  were 
menacing  the  Roumanian  rear.  The  court  was  pre- 
pared for  any  emergency.  Elaborate  plans  were 
made.  The  King  and  Queen  would  take  refuge  in 
a  Russian  town.  The  Roumanian  army  would  with- 
draw to  the  Caucasus,  if  need  be,  but  it  would  fight 
for  every  inch  of  ground.  .  .  . 


18  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

The  Roumanian  government  signed  the  separate 
peace  on  May  7,  1918.  Small  countries  have  to 
play  safe  even  when  they  embark  on  an  adventure. 
Some  of  the  great  Scottish  families  had  sons  both 
in  the  Jacobite  and  the  Whig  camp,  so  that  they 
might  keep  their  estates  whichever  side  won.  Simi- 
larly, small  countries  whose  fate  hinges  on  the 
pleasure  of  the  Great  Powers,  usually  have  two  sets 
of  politicians  ready  to  change  places  according  to 
the  ups  and  downs  of  international  rivalry.  Rou- 
mania  had  a  set  of  pro-Ally  statesmen  that  had 
brought  her  into  the  war.  She  also  had  a  set  of 
pro-German  politicians  who  were  prepared  to  come 
into  power  as  soon  as  their  rivals  went  out.  The 
Premier  who  signed  the  separate  peace  in 
Bucharest  was  INI.  Marghiloman. 


Half  a  year  passed,  and  Germany  was  defeated. 
The  jNIarghiloman  ministry  went  out ;  the  Bratiano 
ministry — the  old  pro-Ally  war  cabinet — came 
back.  Once  more  peace,  officially  so  called,  reigned 
in  Europe. 

The  Queen  journeyed  to  the  West.  The  war 
had  ended;  but  not  her  war-born  activities.  Her 
trip  was  one  of  pleasure  combined  with  business. 
She  did  not  cease  to  work  for  her  country.  She 
was  asked  by  Roumanians  to  buy  locomotives  and 
rolling  stock,  to  sell  wheat  and  maize  for  them.  In 
Paris,  beside  attending  innumerable  social  engage- 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA       19 

ments  and  buying  almost  as  innumerable  dresses 
she  found  time  to  discuss  with  leaders  of  industry 
and  finance  the  needs  of  Roumania.  She  was  ever 
on  the  verge  of  concluding  big  transactions;  but 
they  seldom  came  off  entirely.  Hitches  occurred. 
They  couldn't  be  helped.  The  Queen  had  an  imagi- 
nation that  was  all  the  more  apt  to  run  away  with 
her  as  it  had  been  fed  the  richest  of  foods  for  the 
past  three  years.  Be  that  as  it  may — the  fact  re- 
mains that  Queen  INIarie  unfolded  a  skill  as  a  press 
agent  for  her  country  that  any  professional  might 
envy.     She  "sold"  Roumania  to  the  West. 

But  Paris,  after  all,  is  a  comparatively  easy  place 
for  royalty.  After  forty  years  of  the  Republic  a 
queen — any  queen — cannot  help  being  a  social  suc- 
cess. Dinners  are  given  for  her  by  the  Comtesse  de 
Beam,  the  Comtesse  Aynard  de  Chabrillan,  the 
Marquise  de  Flers  and  others.  Often  at  these 
dinners  a  strange  hissing  sound  may  be  heard  above 
the  din  of  conversation  and  laughter,  the  ruffling  of 
silks  and  the  clinking  of  hand-cut  glasses.  It  is  the 
sound  of  little  private  axes  being  ground  by  a  pru- 
dent and  ambitious  hostess.  But  it  takes  an  ex- 
perienced ear  to  perceive  that  discreet  noise.  They 
still  know  how  to  make  guests  happy  in  the  grand 
style  at  Paris. 

London  is  different.  The  acid  test  of  twentieth- 
century  royalty  is  its  reception  in  England.  One 
might  almost  say  to  a  king,  "Tell  me  with  whom  you 
associate  in  England  and  I  tell  you  what  kind  of  a 
king  you  are." 


20  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

To  begin  with,  the  attitude  of  the  British  aristo- 
cracy even  to  their  own  King  is  a  pecuhar  one. 
They  worship  the  institution  of  monarchy  with  an 
aknost  rehgious  zeal.  But  their  respect  for  the 
office  does  not  preclude  indifference,  or  worse,  to  its 
incumbent.  That  King  Edward — who  really  was 
an  excellent  ruler,  but  who  had  had  his  escapades  in 
his  youth  and  spoke  English  with  a  German  accent 
— did  not  have  a  very  happy  time  of  it  with  a  certain 
section  of  the  British  aristocracy  is  well  enough 
known.  Who  can  be  more  royalistic  than  the  Duke 
of  Buccleuch?  Yet  it  is  possible  for  a  INIontagu- 
Douglas-Scott  to  look  down  upon  a  mere  Saxe- 
Coburg — not  to  mention  their  recently  acquired 
name  of  Windsor — as  a  kind  of,  well,  upstart.  To 
a  degree  it  is  nothing  but  self-defence — love  of  com- 
fort. The  presence  of  a  King  or  Queen  adds  noth- 
ing to  the  glory  of  an  English  or  Scottish  duke,  but 
it  does  constrain  him,  and  dukes  do  not  like  to  be 
constrained. 

And  if  some  of  these  great  houses  are  mildly  re- 
luctant to  associate  with  a  King  of  England,  it  is 
only  what  one  may  expect  if  they  refuse  point  blank 
to  consort  with  what  they  call  minor  royalty.  Snobs 
of  all  nations,  if  they  have  been  good  on  earth,  go 
to  England  when  they  die,  and  good  English  snobs 
remain  there — it's  safer  than  Heaven. 

Consequently,  to  say  that  the  position  of  a 
"minor  royalty"  in  London  is  none  too  pleasant  is 
an  understatement.  As  to  their  relations  with  His 
Britannic  Majesty — a  member  of  the  Household 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA       21 

once  said  that  they  might  almost  as  well  be  mere 
Americans.  This,  of  course,  is  an  exaggeration; 
yet  great  is  the  day,  and  correspondingly  rare,  when 
they  are  bidden  to  a  short  informal  meal,  or  to  a  long 
formal  function,  in  the  company  of  the  King.  They 
are  treated  at  Court  as  an  exalted  kind  of  poor 
relation.  If  they  are  out  for  a  "good  time,"  socially, 
they  are  left  to  their  own  devices. 

Yet  they  are  not  altogether  forlorn  even  in  Lon- 
don. All  over  the  world,  from  Punta  Arenas  and 
Johannesburg  to  Moscow,  there  are  branches  of  the 
international  organization  known  as  the  Fraternity 
of  Social  Climbers.  Their  motto  is,  "If  you  can't 
have  the  sun  and  moon  to  play  with,  content  your- 
self with  the  stars."  Around  each  of  the  minor 
royalties  visiting  in  London  there  is  a  fairly  large 
and  quite  brilliant — too  brilliant — court  of  what 
are  called  vieucc  nouveauoc  riches,  ambitious  Jews 
whose  fortunes  were  founded  in  the  comparatively 
ancient  times  of,  say,  the  Boer  War,  of  foreigners 
who  want  to  become,  or  at  least  pass  for  English. 

When  the  King  and  Queen  of  Roumania  come  to 
London  they  are,  and  are  not,  at  a  loss  for  company. 
They  are  invited  to  a  number  of  official  and  quasi- 
official  functions  and  entertainments  dutifully 
given  for  them  by  members  of  the  Cabinet,  the 
Prime  Minister,  the  Master  of  the  Horse — and  be- 
yond that  they  have  to  accept,  and  even  be  grateful 
for,  the  association  of  a  little  inner  circle  of  first,  or, 
at  the  best,  second  generation  millionaires  who  have 
everything  in  the  world  they  can  wish  for  except 


22  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

security  of  social  tenure.  Their  greatest  friends  are 
the  Lord  and  Lady  Astor,  and  Lord  Astor's  sister, 
Mrs.  Spender  Clay,  of  whom  Queen  Marie  is  par- 
ticularly fond. 

How  little  Queen  IMarie,  who  claims  to  be  Eng- 
lish, knows  about  Britain  is  attested  by  the 
rumoured  fact — I  must  give  it  as  such — that  she 
attempted  to  marry  off  her  daughter  to  the  eldest 
son  of  the  haughtiest  of  Scottish  dukes.  It  was 
simply  out  of  the  question.  German  princes,  before 
the  war  the  most  reliable  and  abundant  supply  of 
mates  for  female  royalty,  were  somewhat  out  of  the 
fashion ;  so  the  Queen  finally  picked  for  the  Princess 
Elizabeth's  husband  a  Prince  whose  German  origin 
was  passably  overlaid  by  a  few  coats  of  Danish  and 
Greek  tradition.  It  was  an  ambition  easy  enough 
to  fulfill.  True,  the  Crown  Prince  Georgios  was  a 
nephew  of  the  Kaiser;  but  he  also  was  Crown 
Prince  of  Greece.  He  became  Queen  JNIarie's 
son-in-law. 


VI 


All  things  considered,  European  capitals — the 
important  ones — offer  a  rather  slippery  ground  for 
the  feet  of  Queen  ^larie.  With  Western  Euro- 
peans she  always  has  a  sense  of  insecurity.  But 
there  is  a  land  of  promise  for  her — the  land  of 
promise  for  all  uprooted:  America. 

All  her  uncertainty  vanishes,  as  by  touch  of  the 
well-known  magic  wand,  in  her  contact  with  Ameri- 


QUEEN  MARIE  OF  ROUMANIA       23 

cans.  Then  she  is  in  her  element.  She  is  a  live 
woman — she  is  very  beautiful,  she  has  "pep"  and 
imagination;  she  would  cut  a  figure  even  were  she 
not  a  "crowned  head,"  as  American  newspapers 
wistfully  put  it.  But  she  is  a  queen ;  and  for  Ameri- 
cans she  represents  the  eighth  wonder  of  the  world, 
the  Shulamite,  the  fulfilment  of  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years'  republican  dreams,  the  Queen.  She  is  the 
fond  union  of  legend  and  reality ;  she,  the  author  of 
fairy  tales,  is  a  fairy  tale  herself,  and  also  a  live, 
honest-to-goodness  fairy  who  will  come  to  lunch  if 
asked.  La  Rochefoucauld  said:  ''Le  plaisir  de 
V amour  est  d' aimer."  The  Queen  is  not  only  loved 
by  Americans:  she  loves  Americans.  Never  is  she 
more  conscious  of  her  charm  than  when  she  is  with 
Ajnericans.  She  ought  to  be  a  happy  woman,  for 
she  need  not  take  chances  on  Heaven.  She  can  look 
forward  to  beatification  on  this  earth.  On  the  day 
when  she  lands  in  America  a  whole  continent  will 
turn  into  an  altar  where  the  smell  of  newsprint  will 
substitute  incense. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  she  was  represented 
in  a  German  paper — was  it  "Simplicissimus?" — as 
saying:  "Now  we  have  to  mobilize  the  photograph- 
ers." Of  course  she  did  not  say  that;  but  if  she  had 
said  anything  of  the  kind  she  would  have  said  movie 
camera  men.  Yes,  for  Queen  Marie,  America  is  the 
Land  of  Opportunity.  But  even  in  America  she 
ought  to  be  warned  against  little  social  mistakes. 
Every  once  in  a  while  she  sends  letters  to  the  Ameri- 
can press;  but  she  usually  selects  the  wrong  news- 


24  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

papers.  Once,  on  the  eve  of  one  of  her  several  visits 
to  the  United  States  that  did  not  come  off,  she  sent 
out  435  photographs — one  to  each  Congressman. 

VII 

Still,  one  must  not  be  unfair  to  her.  She  writes 
letters  that  make  excellent  reading  and  have  a  real 
literary  quality;  and  she  adores  her  children — she 
was  prostrated  by  the  death  of  her  son  Mircea  in 
the  dark  days  of  the  war.  But  one  cannot  forget 
her  treatment  of  horses.  She  rides  them  to  death 
in  three  months. 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA 


25 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA 


The  French  statesman  Cardinal  Mazarin  was 
wont  to  ask  candidates  for  appointments  in  his  ser- 
vice, "Are  you  happy?"    Siete  felice? 

The  query  was  a  wise  one,  and  the  adjective  well 
chosen ;  for  felice  means  more  than  happy ;  it  implies 
the  idea  of  good  luck.  A  connoisseur  of  men, 
Mazarin  knew  that  unhappy  people — people,  that 
is,  born  with  a  heavy,  brooding  temperament, 
habitual  worriers,  are  usually  the  unlucky  ones — as 
if  Fate  took  a  malicious  pleasure  in  seeking  out  the 
thin-skinned,  those  who  feel  pinpricks  as  stabs  and 
scratches  as  sabre  cuts.  ''Ce  sont  tou jours  les 
memes  qui  se  font  tuer"  says  the  French  proverb. 
And  German  slang  has  a  most  picturesque  ex- 
pression for  these  memes,  for  the  person  in  whose 
pursuit  misfortune  goes  out  of  its  way — it  calls 
him  a  Pechvogel,  a  "pitch  bird"  literally.  He  is 
an  inverted  Midas  whose  touch  turns  gold  into 
lead. 

If  externals  alone  determined  people  s  lives  King 
Ferdinand  of  Roumania  might,  indeed,  be  called  a 

happy  man,  and  a  lucky  one,  too.    He  reigns  over 

27 


28  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

a  peaceful  country  of  seventeen  million  inhabitants, 
potentially  one  of  the  richest  lands  in  Europe,  just 
doubled  by  a  victorious  war;  he  is  not  unpopular; 
he  has  a  lovely  wife,  good  shooting,  and,  in  his 
library,  many  fine  books,  among  which  those  by 
Anatole  France  are  even  cut.  Still,  if  one  looks  a 
httle  more  closely  at  the  chart  of  his  life,  it  becomes 
apparent  that  he  has  not  been  favoured  by  Fate  as 
much  as  he  could  desire.  There  was  a  little  joker,  as 
American  slang  has  it,  concealed  somewhere  in  al- 
most every  one  of  the  gifts  bestowed  upon  him  by  a 
squint-eyed  Providence. 

To  begin  with,  he  might  be  called  good-looking, 
but  for — That  "but  for"  has  pursued  him  all  his 
life  like  a  second  shadow.  He  is  slim  and  fair;  he 
has  well-shaped  hands  and  a  small  head,  with  a  long 
nose  that  might  express  character ;  but  his  forehead 
is  narrow  to  the  extreme,  the  forehead  of  a  man 
who  is  shy  as  well  as  obdurate.  That,  however,  is 
not  the  worst  of  it.  When  he  was  born  it  was  found 
that  his  ears  protruded  like  the  wings  of  a  windmill ; 
as  if  an  impatient  teacher  had  precociously  pulled 
them,  anticipating  by  years  some  childish  trespass. 
A  nurse  was  instructed  to  flatten  down  the  re- 
bellious flaps  by  the  application  of  bandages.  Dur- 
ing the  first  months  of  a  baby's  life  that  defect  is 
corrected  easily  enough.  But  the  nurse  forgot 
about  the  bandages,  and  Prince  Ferdinand  was 
marked  for  life  by  ears  the  shape  and  size  of  which 
were  not  compensated  for  by  any  special  acoustic 
capacity. 


u.  &  u. 


KING    FERDINAND    OF    ROUMANIA 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA    29 

It  is  a  commonplace  to  speak  about  the  relation 
of  people's  character  and  their  exterior.  A  physical 
trait  will  infallibly  influence  a  sensitive  and  self- 
conscious  youth  such  as  Prince  Ferdinand  of  Ho- 
henzollern-Sigmaringen  grew  up  to  be.  For  him 
it  is  to  pass  through  life  full  of  a  good  will  toward 
men  and  things  which  he  vainly  struggles  to  express 
adequately.  He  has  a  kind  heart ;  he  has  a  genuine 
sense  of  duty.  But  over  the  council  of  his  mental 
and  moral  traits  shyness  presides,  a  relentless  chair- 
man.   He  is  the  King  with  the  Inferiority  Complex. 

When  in  1866  Prince  Charles  of  Hohenzollern- 
Sigmaringen — of  the  elder,  Catholic,  non-reigning 
branch  of  the  House  of  Zollern — was  offered  the 
throne  of  the  then  Principality  of  Roumania,  he 
was  at  first  inclined  to  refuse.  He  consulted  Bis- 
marck, who  advised  him  to  accept,  but  in  a  rather 
flippant  spirit.  ''Cela  vous  fera  des  jolis  souvenirs 
de  jeunesse/'  the  Iron  Chancellor  remarked.  For 
once  Bismarck  guessed  wrong.  Charles  accepted, 
and  before  long  Prince  Carol  became  King — a 
wealthy  and  important  King  at  that,  whose  friend- 
ship was  sought  by  Czar  and  Emperor.  He  estab- 
lished in  Roumania  the  House  of  Hohenzollern — 
and  today  Roumania  is  the  only  country  where  a 
Hohenzollern  still  reigns. 

Thus  one  of  Charles's  dreams  was  fulfilled.  He 
became  the  founder  of  a  dynasty.  Another  dream 
— to  become  the  founder  of  a  family — remained 
unfulfilled.  He  ardently  hoped  for  a  son — his  wife 
gave  him  a  daughter,  and  this  daughter  died  young. 


so  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

But  he  had  nephews,  and  one  of  these,  Prince  Fer- 
dinand, was  elected  Principe  Mostenitor,  heir- 
prince,  by  the  Roumanian  diet. 

"Lives  of  crown  princes  remind  us.  .  ."  They 
remind  us,  in  the  first  place,  of  the  tribulations  of 
Frederick  the  Great  when  he  was  not  great  as  yet. 
He  led,  as  everybody  knows,  a  dog's  life,  while  his 
father  was  still  alive  and  kicking — very  literally  so. 
But  even  at  its  best  a  crown  prince's  position  is  any- 
thing but  enviable,  if  judged  by  the  standards  of  his 
own  class.  Firstly,  there  is  the  usual  feeling  of  the 
heir  to  a  great  fortune,  the  "too  good  to  be  true" 
feeling:  "I  shall  never  come  into  my  own."  Then, 
they  have  to  contend  with  the  natural  jealousy  and 
distrust  on  the  part  of  the  monarch,  whose  death  in 
their  heart  of  hearts  they  cannot  help  hoping  for. 
That  jealousy  and  distrust,  just  as  naturally,  breed 
in  them  a  spirit  of  antagonism,  a  critical  attitude 
with  a  strong  emotional  accent,  as  Freudians  would 
say.  Queen  Victoria  steadfastly  refused  the  co- 
operation of  her  eldest  son,  and  even  declined  to 
share  with  him  the  knowledge  of  political  and  diplo- 
matic affairs  which  she  accumulated  during  her 
unusually  long  and  eventful  reign.  It  so  happened 
that  his  mother's  jealousy  was  for  the  Prince  of 
Wales  a  blessing  in  disguise.  It  turned  him  loose 
on  life  at  large,  and  his  contact  with  unexpur- 
gated  reality,  maintained  through  the  long  years 
of  his  waiting,  made  him  a  very  wise  King  indeed, 
one  of  the  most  human  and  humane  in  modern 
times. 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA    31 

II 

In  a  sense,  the  lot  of  the  Crown  Prince  Ferdinand 
was  somewhat  better.  King  Carol  did  not  keep 
him  at  arm's  length.  He  consulted  his  prospective 
successor,  taught  him,  treated  him  much  as  the  head 
of  a  big  commercial  concern  would  treat  an  earnest 
and  ambitious  son.  But  Ferdinand  was  labouring 
under  what  is  perhaps,  short  of  that  lack  of  re- 
straints which  makes  the  criminal,  the  greatest  of 
moral  handicaps — an  exaggerated  shyness,  a  lack  of 
self-confidence.  His  subjects-to-be  did  not  make 
things  easier  for  him.  Roumanians  have  a  great 
many  defects,  but  one  of  the  qualities  of  these  de- 
fects is  an  overdose  of  cleverness.  They  are  too 
clever  to  be  good.  Now  here  was  this  young  and 
timid  foreigner  who  did  not  speak  their  language, 
whose  mental  processes  were  obviously  slower  than 
their  own,  who  was  not  "in"  on  the  great  many  per- 
sonal intrigues,  animosities,  ad  hoc  alliances,  log- 
rolling constellations  that  make  up  ninety  per  cent 
of  the  political  life  in  small  countries  (as  in  great 
ones),  and  who  was,  nevertheless,  destined  to  rule 
them  eventually.  They  were  far  from  accepting 
that  eventuality,  those  potential  subjects.  Worse 
even,  Prince  Ferdinand  himself  had  his  doubts  as 
to  the  happy  ending.  His  uncle  the  King  was 
healthy  and  strong.  The  King's  mother  was  still 
alive,  a  very  energetic  lady  of  ninety.  Ferdinand 
felt  that  his  chance  would  never  come,  that  his 
uncle  would  outlive  him. 


32  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Most  of  the  mischief  that  mars  this  best  possible 
of  worlds  is  not  the  doing  of  evil  people.  Hundred 
per  cent  wickedness  is  a  rare  phenomenon,  as  rare 
as  genius ;  there  is  not  enough  of  it  to  go  around.  It 
is  the  sentimentalists  who  are  responsible  for  the 
majority  of  our  messes.  Intent  on  the  right,  but 
with  too  little  judgment,  they  occasionally  blunder 
their  way  to  justification;  but  most  of  the  time  they 
merely  act  as  section  hands  on  the  line  of  com- 
munication to  hell.  Bad  people  commit  crimes, 
but  sentimentalists  commit  mistakes,  which,  as  the 
French  rightly  say,  are  much  worse. 

Queen  Elizabeth  of  Roumania,  better  known  un- 
der her  pen  name  as  Carmen  Sylva,  was  a  senti- 
mentalist.   The  most  conspicuous  thing  about  her 
was  her  heart.     She  was  one  of  those  beings  who 
not  only  feel  everything  with  the  deepest  intensity, 
but  who  make  no  secret  of  the  fact.    She  quivered 
and  throbbed  and  sighed  and  loved  all  the  time. 
Emotional  strain  was  for  her  what  water  is  for  a 
fish.     Superlatives  were  the  only  words  she  used, 
and  she  talked  a  good  deal,  and  wrote  as  much. 
Her  favourite  preoccupation  was  being  at  the  mercy 
of  somebody  or  something.     She  was  not  only  at 
the  mercy  of  her  own  loves ;  she  was  at  the  mercy  of 
the  loves  of  other  people,  of  the  first  comer.     She 
was,  in  a  word,  what  in  the  language  of  the  United 
States  is  somewhat  rudely  but  graphically  described 
as  an  easy  mark.     One  of  her  maids-of-honour, 
Helene  Vacaresco,  rather  a  clever  and  gifted  per- 
son, conquered  her  completely.     Mile.  Vacaresco 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA    33 

wrote.  Prose,  poetry,  anything.  She  paid  Her 
Majesty  the  subtle  compliment  of  translating  her 
works  into  French.  The  Queen  regarded  her  as 
her  best  friend.  One  day  the  Queen  had  an 
inspiration. 

Roumanians,  notwithstanding  their  German 
rulers  (wags  said,  because  of  them)  were  even  then 
a  strongly  Francophile  people.  The  King  was 
sneered  at  as  a  Prussian.  The  Queen  had  a  poet's 
imagination;  also,  a  poet's  lack  of  practical  sense. 
She  wanted  to  help  the  King  in  overcoming  the 
general  antipathy  against  things  German  which 
included  the  dynasty.  The  Crown  Prince,  true 
enough,  was  a  German.  But  let  this  German 
Crown  Prince  marry  a  Roumanian  woman,  and 
then — In  a  word,  Carmen  Sylva  conceived  the  bril- 
liant idea  of  a  marriage  between  the  Crown  Prince 
Ferdinand  and  the  translator  of  her  works  into 
French,  Mile.  Vacaresco. 

The  Queen  lived  in  Roumania,  but  she  thought  in 
a  vacuum.  One  of  the  trifles  she  forgot  was  her 
own  raison  d'etre.  She  forgot  how  she  had  come  to 
be  Queen  in  Roumania.  The  Roumanian  statesmen 
chose  a  foreigner  to  rule  them  because  they  would 
never  choose  a  Roumanian.  Charles  of  Hohen- 
zollern-Sigmaringen  was  King  of  Roumania  not 
so  much  by  grace  of  God  as  by  grace  of  the  mutual 
jealousy  of  the  great  Roumanian  clans.  And  the 
Roumanian  politicians  did  not  go  to  Germany  for 
a  King  merely  in  order  to  be  saddled  with  a 
Roumanian  Queen. 


34  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Meanwhile  Ferdinand  and  Helene  were  left  to 
themselves  a  good  deal.  They  were  photographed 
together.  Suddenly  Queen  Ehzabeth  sprang  Car- 
men Sylva's  idea  on  the  Cabinet.  She  announced 
the  engagement.  The  Cabinet,  for  once,  put  down 
its  foot  like  one  man.  Mile.  Vacaresco  would  never 
do.  The  Cabinet  won.  The  Queen  was  deeply  mor- 
tified. Mile.  Vacaresco  had  to  leave  the  country. 
She  went  abroad  in  quest  of  solace  and  found  it  in 
collecting  newspaper  clippings  about  herself  and, 
after  a  while,  in  publishing  a  book  on  "Kings  and 
Queens  I  Have  Known."  Ferdinand  also  went 
abroad,  in  quest  of  a  bride.  After  a  while  he  found 
one. 

He  found  a  wife  who  might  have  been  Queen  of 
England,  and  who  now  was  willing  to  live  with  him 
in  his  distant  and  comparatively  unimportant 
country.  Princesses  of  the  Blood  usually  marry 
because  it  is  the  easiest  escape  from  being  bullied 
into  marrying  somebody  else.  The  second  suitor 
often  has  a  good  opportunity  prepared  by  the  re- 
fusal of  the  first.  In  1893  the  Crown  Prince  Ferdi- 
nand married  Princess  Mary,  daughter  of  the  Duke 
of  Edinburgh,  and  brought  his  wife  home  to 
Bucharest. 


Ill 


He  was  happy.  But  his  bliss  was  not  unmiti- 
gated. The  eternal  "but  for"  arose  again.  We 
know  the  story  of  the  poor  man  who  quite  unex- 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA    35 

pectedly  inherits  a  huge  fortune  from  some  long- 
forgotten  second  cousin  in  the  Antipodes.  He  who 
has  led  a  quiet,  solitary  life,  reasonably  contented  in 
fulfilling  his  simple  wants,  is  now  infested  by  a  host 
of  friends  whose  emergence  was  just  as  sudden  as 
that  of  the  heritage.  His  door  is  besieged  by  beg- 
gars, amateur  and  professional ;  his  mail  is  swamped 
by  wonderful  offers  of  infallible  investments.  His 
life  is  poisoned,  and  he  ends  by  wishing  back  his 
poverty.  The  story  of  the  man  who  marries  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  women  in  Europe  is  rather 
analogous.  Exceptional  beauty  in  one's  wife  is  a 
mixed  boon.  One  enjoys  it  to  a  degree,  of  course. 
But  then,  one  seldom  sees  the  face  of  a  person  one 
has  lived  with  for  years.  One  is  envied ;  but  one  does 
not  envy  oneself.  Those  who  envy  you  have  almost 
more  fun  than  yourself;  for  they  enjoy  vicariously 
a  happiness  that  for  you  has  become,  more  or  less, 
a  mere  routine. 

And  Princess  Marie,  as  she  called  herself,  was 
as  audacious  as  her  husband  was  shy.  Her  adven- 
tures on  the  Riviera  are  remembered — daring 
though,  in  the  event,  harmless  escapades  at  masque 
balls  and  the  like.  Then  there  was  the  stranger 
who  saw  her  in  front  of  a  milliner's  window  and 
asked  her  permission  to  buy  her  the  hat  she  was 
admiring.  "Certainly,"  she  said  and  stepped 
into  the  shop,  followed  by  the  man  whose  ardour 
materially  cooled  when  she  gave  her  name  and 
address.      Such    anecdotes    could    be    multiplied. 


36  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

But  this  one  will  give  a  taste  of  her  husband's 
difficulties. 

One  of  these  difficulties  was  geography.  The 
poet  Ovid  wrote  his  Tristia  because  he  was  exiled 
to  Tomi  by  an  angered  Csesar;  and  Tomi  was  in 
Roumania.  Every  married  woman  sooner  or  later 
in  hfe  passes  through  the  phase  of  Ibsen's  heroine 
Nora,  though  most  are  not  conscious  of  what  is 
happening  to  them,  and  resign  after  a  brief  and 
futile  flurry.  It  is  one  thing  to  see,  for  a  short 
interlude,  another  man  opposite  one  at  the  break- 
fast table;  quite  another  to  shed  the  chains  that 
have  been  forged  forever.  One  day  Princess  Marie 
left  Roumania  for  her  mother's  home,  resolved 
never  to  return.  Months  passed,  advisers  were  con- 
sulted, and  some  of  them  were  of  opinion  that  the 
departure  was  not  only  final  but  also  for  the  ulti- 
mate good.  Princess  Marie,  they  said,  knew  not  a 
good  thing  when  she  saw  it.  She  had  had  the  privi- 
lege of  living  in  Roumania,  and  did  not  appreciate 
it.  M.  Maioresco,  who  later  became  Premier,  was 
especially  unrelenting,  and  was  supported  by 
Queen  Carmen,  who  had  forgotten  nothing.  But 
more  months  passed,  and  at  last  a  baby  was  born 
to  the  Crown  Princess.  Prince  Ferdinand,  as  al- 
ways, shrank  from  a  violent  decision.  He  was 
good.  He  forgave.  It  is  difficult  for  courtiers 
to  be  plus  royaliste  que  le  roi,  especially  when  the 
king  appears  in  his  role  of  husband.  There  is  a 
Chinese  proverb  which  says,  "You  always  get  your 
own  food  in  a  chipped  bowl."    Prince  Ferdinand, 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA    37 

he  of  the  inferiority  complex,  had  long  ago  resigned 
himself  to  the  chipped  bowl.  His  forgiveness  was 
part  intrinsic  kindness,  part  surrender  to  fate,  part 
a  sense  of  duty  as  future  ruler.  It  was  not  only 
his  domestic  happiness  that  was  served  to  him  in 
cracked  china. 

Like  a  real  feudal  lord,  like  a  true  gentleman, 
he  was  extremely  fond  of  hunting.  It  was  his  great 
relaxation  from  the  very  tiring  occupation  of  a 
king  which  is  not  unlike  that  of  a  managing  editor 
of  a  great  newspaper;  it  consists  of  signing  a  few 
state  papers  and  reading  a  great  many  newspapers. 
The  greatest  sport  for  a  Roumanian  gentleman  is 
the  bear  hunt.  One  was  organized  for  the  Crown 
Prince.  He  had  been  looking  forward  to  it  for 
weeks.  He  was  thrilled  with  expectancy.  For 
two  full  days  he  climbed  difficult  mountain  passes, 
yearning  for  the  encounter.  At  last  the  bear  ap- 
peared. The  Prince  shouldered  his  rifle.  Suddenly 
the  bear  rose  on  its  hind  legs  and  danced.  It  had 
been  commandeered  by  an  all  too  obliging  host, 
anxious  lest  his  princely  guest  should  not  have  good 
sport.  The  Prince  went  home,  furious.  The  story 
swept  Roumania  like  a  cataract. 

Another  of  his  subjects  asked  him  to  a  pheasant 
shoot.  It  was  a  bad  year  for  pheasants,  so  a  train- 
load  of  birds,  in  boxes,  was  imported  from  France 
and  Germany.  They  were  let  loose  in  the  woods, 
but  when  the  great  moment  arrived  they  refused 
to  rise.  The  beaters  were  at  a  loss.  They  per- 
formed extra  antics  to  no  avail — the  pheasants 


38  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

stood,  or  rather  lay,  pat.  It  was  very  pathetic 
indeed.  Poor  Prince!  His  bear  had  risen;  his 
pheasants  did  not.  It  was  wrong  all  around.  It 
was  Fate. 

IV 

Another  pleasure  of  Kings  is  the  war  game. 
For  that  Prince  Ferdinand  inherited  a  taste  from 
thirty  generations  of  Hohenzollern  ancestry.  More 
directly,  he  inherited  it  from  his  uncle  and  prede- 
cessor, King  Charles,  who  was  a  good  soldier  and 
achieved  great  distinction  in  the  Russo-Turkish 
war  of  1877.  Ferdinand  had  had  his  share  of 
manoeuvres.  He  yearned  for  the  real  thing.  In 
1912  Bulgaria  and  Serbia  fought  shoulder  to 
shoulder  against  Turkey.  Having  been  friends 
and  allies  for  such  a  long  time — six  full  months — 
they  decided  it  was  getting  too  much  for  them,  and 
fell  on  each  other's  throats.  Roumania  had  inter- 
ests at  stake.  She  intervened.  At  last,  a  war! 
Prince  Ferdinand  was  appointed  in  command.  His 
mouth  watered.  The  great  moment!  He  conceived 
strategic  plans,  envisaged  great  battles,  dreamed 
victories.  Alas  for  him!  the  Bulgarians  refused  to 
fight.  They  surrendered  with  their  whole  army. 
The  bear  had  risen.  It  was  wrong.  The  Bul- 
garians lay  down.  Wrong  again.  Meagre  though 
the  Roumanian  victory  was,  it  was  bought  at  a 
Pyrrhic  price.  The  Bulgarians  had  cholera,  and 
they  infested  the  victors.  The  farce  all  but  turned 
into  tragedy. 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA    39 

In  the  war  of  1913  the  Roumanian  generals  had 
not  tasted  blood.  But  they  smelt  it  a  little,  and 
decided  it  was  good.  They  looked  forward  to  their 
next  chance.  The  world  war  was  lurking  below 
the  line  of  the  horizon.  At  the  end  of  1914  it 
seemed  as  if  there  had  been  a  turn  in  the  fortunes 
of  the  Crown  Prince  Ferdinand.  His  uncle,  whom 
he  had  believed  imperishable,  died,  and  the  Crown 
Prince  became  King.  He  also  became  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  Roumanian  army.  He  lived  up  to 
the  exigency  of  the  moment.  He  designed  a 
new  uniform.  It  was  one  of  the  great  achieve- 
ments of  his  life.  But  still  greater  ones  were  in 
the  offing. 

The  world  war  was  on.  It  was  only  a  question 
of  time — Roumania,  with  her  army  clothed  in  the 
brand-new  uniform  devised  by  the  King,  was  to 
step  in  at  the  right  moment.  With  her  powerful 
allies  staunchly  on  her  side,  she  was  sure  to  win. 
Just  who  these  powerful  allies  would  be,  whether 
the  Entente  or  the  Central  Powers,  was  for  the 
moment  undecided;  but  that  was  a  secondary  con- 
sideration. On  paper  Roumania  was  a  kind  of 
non-resident  member  of  the  Triple  Alliance;  but 
Italy  had  been  a  regular  member,  and  still  .  .  . 
The  majority  of  the  Roumanian  people  were 
pro- Ally;  and  Ferdinand  inherited  from  his  uncle 
King  Carol  among  other  pleasant  and  useful 
heirlooms  a  very  keen  hatred  of  his  kinsman  the 
Kaiser. 

In  the  spring  of  1916  the  fateful  hour  struck. 


40  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

The  Russian  government  assured  King  Ferdinand 
that  the  Bulgarians  would  desert  the  German  cause 
as  soon  as  they  saw  that  they  would  have  to  fight 
against  the  Russians  who  were  to  be  sent  to  aid 
Roumania.  Marshal  Joffre  telegraphed  that  Aus- 
tria was  as  good  as  beaten,  that  Roumania  would 
not  meet  with  any  resistance  on  the  road  to  Buda- 
pest, that  she  was  on  the  eve  of  realizing  her  long- 
cherished  dream  of  annexing  Transylvania.  Rou- 
mania was  swept  into  the  war  on  the  side  of  the 
Allies  by  a  tidal  wave  of  hope  and  enthusiasm. 
The  Commander-in-Chief  was  happier  than  any- 
body else. 

This  time  the  adventure  of  the  dancing  bear  was 
not  repeated.  Germany  realized  that  she  was  stak- 
ing all.  Troops  were  rushed  east  from  Verdun  and 
hurled  against  the  Roumanians.  The  Russian  army 
ran  true  to  form;  that  is,  it  ran.  The  Roumanian 
government,  headed  by  the  King,  had  to  evacuate 
Bucharest  and  transfer  to  lassy.  For  another  year 
resistance  dragged  along.  Then  came  the  debacle, 
and  King  Ferdinand  was  compelled  to  sign  the 
separate  peace.  He  had  to  dismiss  his  pro- Ally 
ministry  and  to  surround  himself  with  the  old  pro- 
German  clique. 

Another  turn  of  fortune's  wheel,  and  Germany 
was  downed.  The  King  and  Queen  returned  to 
Bucharest  in  triumph.  The  incredible  came  to  pass : 
Roumania  emerged  from  a  lost  war  with  her  terri- 
tory and  population  doubled,  with  her  national 
dream  completely  realized.     She  gained  far  more, 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA    41 

comparatively,  than  either  France  or  England.  It 
was  nothing  short  of  a  miracle. 

Nor  did  the  wheel  of  fortune,  once  started  in  the 
right  direction,  stop  at  this  one  winning  number. 
Roumania  had  her  share  of  the  spoils ;  now  she  was 
to  taste  military  triumph,  all  the  sweetness  of  re- 
venge over  the  hereditary  enemy.  The  Soviet  Gov- 
ernment of  Hungary  was  nearing  its  end;  but  it 
was  for  the  Roumanian  army  to  administer  the 
death  blow.  Ferdinand  could  now  enter  Budapest 
at  the  head  of  his  victorious  troops.  But  the  chance 
came  too  late.  The  King  had  lost  zest  in  military 
adventure.  He  disliked  the  idea  of  a  war  which 
was  seventy-five  per  cent  politics  and  only  a  quarter 
fighting.  Riding  in  triumph  over  the  little  Jew 
Bela  Kun  did  not  whet  his  fancy.  He  stayed  at 
home  while  his  regiments  marched  into  the  Magyar 
capital. 

Suddenly  he  felt  a  thirst  for  Life,  with  a  capi- 
tal L.  Now  it  was  he  who  passed  through  the 
stage  of  Nora.  He  wanted  to  see  the  world.  He 
was  past  fifty,  and  he  had  never  seen  Paris.  He 
craved  Paris.  It  took  him  a  year  to  carry  out  his 
plan.  But  at  last  it  was  realized.  He  was  in  Paris. 
He  placed  a  wreath  on  the  monument  of  the  Un- 
known Warrior  of  France;  he  visited  the  tomb  of 
Napoleon  at  the  Invalides.  In  a  very  substantial 
sense,  this  was  more  than  a  pleasure  trip.  It  was 
a  great  victory  that  he  scored  at  last  in  an  old 
family  feud.  He  was  a  Hohenzollern ;  and  he  was 
in  Paris.     Where  was  his  kinsman  the  Kaiser, 


42  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

where  was  the  Crown  Prince?  They  could  never, 
never,  never  hope  to  enter  the  earthly  paradise 
called  Paris.  No  Hohenzollern  of  the  Protestant, 
imperial  branch  could.  The  Sigmaringen  branch, 
which  now  was  the  only  ruling  one,  the  royal  house 
of  Roumania,  had  always  regarded  itself  the  true, 
the  elder  line  of  the  Hohenzollern  family;  but  for 
centuries  they  were  overshadowed  by  the  younger 
line,  the  upstart  Brandenburgians,  who  had 
achieved  their  greatness  simply  because  their  an- 
cestor, a  monk,  broke  his  vow  and  stole  the  estates 
of  his  order.  For  once  in  his  life,  there  in  Paris, 
Ferdinand  felt  like  a  conqueror  .  .  . 


In  this  twentieth  century  of  ours  what  one  might 
call  the  fairytale  view  of  kingcraft  and  kingship 
is  still  a  popular  one.  Newspapers  and  magazines 
of  the  order  euphemistically  termed  yellow  picture 
the  rulers  of  this  world  as  childish  persons  impos- 
sibly happy  in  their  resplendent  uniforms,  with 
their  breasts  covered  with  no  end  of  ribbons  and 
stars.  Nor  are  their  heads  forgotten — albeit  drawn 
as  mere  pegs  to  hold  their  crowns.  Kings  in  news- 
papers always  wear  their  crowns  to  breakfast. 
There  is  something  to  be  said  for  that  version. 
Resplendent  uniforms  are  actually  worn  at  not  a 
few  court  ceremonies,  ribbons  and  stars  are  treas- 
ures coveted  even  by  those  who  have  the  right  to 
bestow  them  and  thus  ought  to  know  what  they 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA    43 

are  worth;  and  as  to  the  heads  surmounted  by 
crowns  that  in  real  Hfe  are  mostly  metaphoric,  in 
most  cases  the  less  said  the  better. 

And  yet  behind  the  unreal  glamour  of  their 
anachronistic  existence  the  few  kings  and  queens 
still  extant  lead  an  anxious  and  cramped  life,  des- 
perately struggling  to  keep  pace  with  a  time  that 
is  running  away  from  them.  First  of  all — not  that 
this  is  put  forward  as  a  revelation — there  is  the 
daily  risk  of  attempts  on  their  lives.  Secondly, 
there  is  the  political  danger,  ever-growing,  of  revo- 
lution. The  spectre  of  unemployment  haunts  sov- 
ereign dreams  oftener  than  ordinary  mortals  would 
think.  Some  years  ago  an  attempt  was  made  on 
the  life  of  the  King  of  Spain  as  he  was  riding  in 
a  carriage  up  the  Champs  Elysees  on  the  side  of 
President  Poincare.  When  all  was  over  the  latter 
asked  his  guest  how  he  felt.  "Oh,  I  am  getting  used 
to  it,"  Alfonso  replied.  "This  is  the  third  incident 
of  its  kind.  There  were  two  attempts  made  on  me 
before  I  was  twenty-one.  Ce  sont  les  risques  du 
metier/' 

There  are  other  risks  connected  with  the  trade. 
The  same  King  Alfonso  was,  in  the  days  after  the 
Armistice,  asked  by  a  friend  of  the  writer  whether 
opposition  to  his  reign  was  strong  in  Spain.  "Since 
1914,"  the  King  replied,  "thirty-nine  dynasties  have 
lost  their  thrones.  One  must  always  be  ready  for 
everything." 

That  wonderful  London  institution,  Lloyd's,  is, 
as  the  reader  knows,  prepared  to  insure  one  against 


44  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

any  kind  of  risk.  The  premium  quoted  on  Spain 
continuing  a  monarchy  is  very  high  indeed.  Even 
higher  is  the  rate  of  the  life  insurance  policy  paid 
for  by  the  King  of  Spain.  The  risks  of  the  trade, 
as  he  himself  put  it,  are  held  against  him.  Bankers 
are  reluctant  to  lend  him  money — his  personal 
income  is  not  very  great,  and  a  republican 
regime   may  repudiate  the   debts   of   a   deposed 

king- 
Protective  mimicry  is  a  weapon  of  the  weak,  and 

kings  are  not  above  taking  a  leaf  from  the  book  of 
the  squirrel  whose  fur  turns  white  in  winter. 
American  dowagers  at  Paris  and  Philadelphia  may 
be  more  royalist  than  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  but 
kings  are  sometimes  less  monarchistic  than  their 
ojSice.  The  King  of  Italy  has  declared  repeatedly 
that  he  was  a  Socialist.  One  of  the  chief  republican 
leaders  in  Spain  relates  that  King  Alfonso  once 
said  to  him:  "If  I  were  not  King  I  would  be  a 
republican."  According  to  certain  malicious  re- 
ports in  the  household  of  one  of  the  major  Euro- 
pean monarchs  still  undethroned  rehearsals  for  a 
revolutionary  emergency  are  held  at  intervals,  like 
fire  drills  in  a  department  store.  And  yet,  with 
all  its  difficulties  and  extra  risks,  the  king  game 
still  finds  its  amateurs.  They  are  recruited  from 
among  the  class  which  the  English,  with  their  di- 
vine snobbishness,  describe  as  "minor  royalties," 
princes  of  the  blood  whose  status  corresponds 
to  that  of  the  sons  of  second  sons  within  the 
peerage. 


KING  FERDINAND  OF  ROUMANIA    45 

When  sovereigns  write  letters  to  their  colleagues 
they  address  them  as  "Mon  tres  cher  frdre/'  But 
this  is  a  mere  manner  of  speaking.  There  are  no 
brotherly  feelings  lost  between  kings.  They  know 
one  another  little,  love  one  another  less,  and  they 
don't  try  to  please  one  another  as  much  as  they 
might.  In  the  unreal  universe  of  the  royal  courts 
one  of  the  important  realities  are  the  little  pieces 
of  ribbon.  They  are  coveted  not  only  by  profes- 
sional courtiers,  war  profiteers,  young  visiters  from 
the  States  and  other  climbers.  Even  the  kings 
themselves  adore  them,  that  is,  those  bestowed  by 
other  kings,  much  as  beautiful  and  idle  women 
adore  jewellery.  One  of  Prince  Ferdinand's  great 
ambitions  in  life  was  to  possess  the  two  highest- 
prized  pieces  of  ribbon  in  Europe,  the  Order  of 
the  Garter  and  the  Order  of  the  Golden  Fleece, 
respectively  distributed  by  the  King  of  England 
and  the  King  of  Spain.  Prince  Ferdinand  never 
received  either. 

One  of  the  most  pronounced  characteristics  of  a 
king  is  his  extreme  touchiness  in  the  matter  of  rank. 
This  is  a  trait  seldom  perceived  by  his  subjects — 
just  because  they  are  subjects.  But  it  is  all  the 
more  apparent  in  the  intercourse  with  his  equals, 
other  royalty. 

Poor  King  Ferdinand!  He  could  never  forget 
an  experience  he  had  as  Crown  Prince.  At  the 
funeral  of  King  Edward  VII.  Prince  Ferdinand 
followed  the  cortege  in  a  brougham  which  he  shared 
with  the  Crown  Prince  of  Serbia.     It  was  awful. 


46  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

A  King  of  England  is  not  buried  every  day,  and 
Ferdinand  had  looked  forward  to  this  occasion. 
All  his  fun  was  spoiled.  On  that  day  his  inferiority 
complex  received  its  hallmark. 


THE  RISE  OF  ELEUTHERIOS 
VENIZELOS 


47 


THE  RISE  OF  ELEUTHERIOS 
VENIZELOS 


Europeans  whose  memory  reaches  beyond  the 
Great  Divide  of  modern  history,  August  1,  1914, 
may  remember  a  quaint  word  that  greeted  them 
with  fair  regularity  at  their  breakfast  on  windy 
Spring  mornings  from  Page  1  of  their  favourite 
newspaper.  It  was  a  composite  word,  a  sort  of 
hnguistic  chim^era :  comitadji.  It  was  an  extremely 
expressive  word,  for  its  very  derivation  and  struc- 
ture were  symbolic  of  its  meaning.  The  first  half 
of  the  word  was,  of  course,  the  French  cormte. 
To  this  was  tacked  the  Turkish  suffix — dji,  denot- 
ing connection  or  occupation.  In  other  words, 
literally  the  comitadji  was  nothing  more  thrilling 
than  a  committeeman.  Actually  he  was  a  hundred 
times  more  thrilling  than  a  committeeman.  For 
the  committee  which  originally  gave  the  name 
to  the  comitadji  was  the  Supreme  Committee  of 
Macedonia  and  Adrianople,  headed  by  the  redoubt- 
able Bulgar,  terror  of  European  chancelleries, 
Boris  Sarafov.  Later  the  name  was  applied  to 
the  membership  of  any  political  organization  of 

4  49 


50  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Christians  in  European  Turkey.  Thus  one  spoke 
of  Serb  comitadjis,  and  the  common  term  used  in 
Continental  newspaper  parlance  for  members  of 
the  Greek  irredentist  society,  the  Ethnike  Hetairia, 
too,  was  comitadji. 

Now  this  hybrid  word  covered  an  amphibious 
specimen  of  humankind.  Of  course,  comitadjis  of 
the  lower  ranks  were  plain  peasants  of  the  Balkan 
type,  accustomed  to  transmute  their  plowshares 
into  swords  at  a  moment's  notice.  But  their  lead- 
ers, or  at  least  some  of  them,  were  different.  One 
day  j^ou  would  meet,  in  a  Vienna  or  Paris  cafe,  a 
gentleman  in  a  top  hat,  frock  coat,  white  waist- 
coat and  patent  leather  shoes.  He  would  speak 
perfect  French  or  German,  as  the  case  might  be; 
he  would  have  conventional  manners,  and  perhaps 
the  only  unusual  features  about  him  would  be  a 
fiery  black  moustache  of  extra  length  and  a  no 
less  fiery  look  in  eyes  of  extra  blackness.  You 
would  learn  on  inquiry  that  the  distinguished  gen- 
tleman was  a  lawyer  or  professor  from  Sofia  or 
Filippopoli  or  Athens,  and  naturally  you  would 
refrain  from  examining  his  hip  pocket,  which  as 
likely  as  not  would  contain  a  sixshooter.  But  then, 
three  or  four  days  later  you  might  meet  the  same 
gentleman  somewhere  in  the  Macedonian  hills,  and 
you  would  be  justified  in  not  recognizing  him  at 
once.  For  now  he  would  be  dressed  in  a  cotton 
shirt,  wide  breeches  tucked  into  boots,  a  flat  round 
cap,  cartridge  straps  crossed  on  the  chest,  and  a 
belt  harbouring  a  couple  of  pistols  and  a  yataghan 


u.  &  u. 


ELEUTHERIOS    VENIZELOS 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  51 

or  two.  You  would,  even  more  punctiliously  than 
before,  abstain  from  investigating  his  pockets,  one 
of  which  might  or  might  not  contain  a  novel  by 
Anatole  France  or  a  handy  edition  of  Plato's 
dialogues. 

And  this  fierce-looking  warrior  would  shoot  a 
cigarette  out  of  your  mouth  from  a  distance  of 
ten  yards  with  the  same  ease  as  the  frock-coated 
lawyer  of  the  Paris  hotel  lobby  would  have,  a  few 
days  earlier,  delivered  a  learned  disquisition  on 
the  historic  dispute  detween  the  Bulgarian  Exar- 
chate and  the  Oecumenical  Patriarchate.  Man  is 
a  creature  of  adaptation;  and  strange  conditions 
produce  strange  variants.  The  noun  comitadji, 
with  its  French  front  and  Turkish  rear,  expressed 
the  double-faced  necessities  of  the  life  from  which 
it  sprang. 

The  comitadji  season  usually  began  late  in 
March  or  early  in  April.  For  twenty  years  prior 
to  the  Great  War  the  news  of  the  thawing  of  snow 
in  the  Balkan  passes  was  a  signal  to  editors  in 
Vienna,  Budapest,  Berlin,  Paris  and  London  to 
bring  up  reinforcements  to  the  telegraph  desk ;  for 
the  comitadjis  might  go  on  the  rampage  any  mo- 
ment, and  there  was  no  telling  what  that  might 
lead  to.  Comitadji  field  activities  were  classed 
under  two  principal  headings.  "Fighting  for  the 
liberty  and  rights  of  Christians"  was  one.  This 
meant  killing  as  many  Turks  as  possible.  "Read- 
justment of  the  ethnical  balance"  was  the  other. 
This  meant,  for  the  Bulgars,  killing  as  many  Serbs 


52  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

and  Greeks  as  possible ;  for  the  Serbs  and  Greeks, 
killing  as  many  Bulgars  as  possible. 

All  this,  of  course,  was  done  by  the  Turkish 
half  of  the  comitadji.  The  French  half  wrote 
articles  and  letters  to  Western  newspapers,  negoti- 
ated loans  in  more  or  less  delicate  ways,  and  gen- 
erally pulled  such  wires  as  were  within  reach.  The 
two  activities  converged  in  causing  headaches  to 
the  diplomatists  of  Europe.  Theirs  was  a  strenuous 
life,  full  of  change  and  surprise  and  danger.  To 
be  a  good  comitad j  i  one  must  be  a  person  of  versa- 
tile gifts  and  great  endurance.  To  be  a  very  good 
comitadji  one  must  be  a  genius.  Very  good  com 
itadjis  were  accordingly  rare. 


II 


In  reading  Mr.  Robert  Lansing's  chapter  on 
Eleutherios  Venizelos  in  his  volume  "The  Big  Four 
and  Others  of  the  Peace  Conference"  one  is  struck 
by  the  notion  that  the  word  comitadji  was  perform- 
ing little  antics  in  the  subconscious  section  of  the 
otherwise  so  orderly  mind  of  America's  Foreign 
Minister.  To  Mr.  Lansing  the  personality  of  the 
Greek  Premier  was  the  most  perturbing  among  all 
the  strange  phenomena  of  that  unusual  foregather- 
ing. And  the  worst  of  it  was  that  he  could  not 
satisfactorily  account  to  himself  for  the  reasons  of 
his  disquietude.  He  knew  that  M.  Venizelos  was 
a  great  man — he  was  told  so  from  all  sides,  and 
he  had  the  evidence  of  his  own  eyes.    He  believed 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  53 

that  "the  views  of  M.  Venizelos  were  given  greater 
weight  by  the  Big  Four  than  those  of  any  other 
single  delegate  at  Paris."  In  consideration  of 
which,  and  also  of  his  own  first-hand  impressions, 
it  seemed  to  him  "almost  heretical"  to  have  a  feel- 
ing of  uncertainty  as  to  M.  Venizelos's  real  char- 
acter. Nevertheless  Mr.  Lansing,  with  his  usual 
painstaking  honesty,  did  not  balk  even  at  the  moral 
risks  of  heresy,  and  refused  to  accept  M.  Venizelos 
at  his  current  exchange  value. 

The  misgivings  which  thus  drove  Mr.  Wilson's 
conscientious  Secretary  of  State  to  the  verge  of  a 
spiritual  abyss,  were  two.  First,  he  knew  that  M. 
Venizelos  had  been,  in  an  earlier  period  of  his  career, 
"in  repeated  revolts  against  constituted  authority 
and  had  lived  as  an  outlaw  in  the  mountains  of 
Crete."  This  was  bad  enough;  what  was  much 
worse  was  that  M.  Venizelos  did  not  look  the  part. 
He  was, 

...  in  appearance,  in  manner,  and  seemingly  in  temperament, 
the  opposite  of  a  typical  revolutionist,  especially  of  a  Greek 
revolutionist  whom  popular  imagination  pictures  as  a  swarthy, 
passionate  brigand  bristling  with  weapons. 

To  an  observer  thus  sharing  the  orthodox  con- 
ception of  what  a  man  who  had  been  in  repeated 
revolts  against  constituted  authority  ought  to  look 
like,  nothing  could  be  more  disappointing  and  per- 
plexing than  the  exterior  of  M.  Venizelos. 

His  appearance  was,  on  the  contrary,  that  of  a  sensitive 


54  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

student.  He  might  have  been  a  professor  in  some  great 
European  university  spending  his  days  in  interpreting  the 
unearthed  treasures  of  Crete's  prehistoric  civilization  or  in 
poring  over  faded  manuscripts  containing  the  Hellenic 
philosophies  of  ancient  days.  Of  medium  height  and  with 
little  superfluous  flesh,  with  hair  and  beard  white  and  thin 
suggesting  premature  old  age,  M.  Venizelos  was  not  distin- 
guished in  form,  feature  or  bearing.  His  complexion  was 
ruddy,  his  eyes  bright  and  clear,  and  his  mouth  gentle  with 
generous  mobile  lips.  He  stooped  in  walking  and  liis  attitude 
in  standing  was  shrinking,  almost  apologetic.  One  could 
hardly  avoid  the  feeling  that  here  was  a  man  too  modest,  if 
not  too  timid,  to  be  a  great  intellectual  force  in  world  affairs, 
too  simple  of  soul  to  mingle  in  the  jealousies  and  intrigues  of 
European  politics,  and  too  idealistic  in  thought  to  pit  his 
mind  against  the  materialism  and  cleverness  of  tlie  trained 
diplomats  and  political  leaders  assembled  at  Paris  to  draw 
a  new  map  of  Europe. 

Nor  was  this  all.  This  mildness  of  appearance 
and  manner,  continues  Mr.  Lansing,  was  further 
enhanced  by  M.  Venizelos's  smile  and  voice. 

When  he  smiled,  his  whole  face  lighted  up  with  benevo- 
lence and  friendliness.  His  smile  was  his  great  charm,  a 
charm  that  was  emphasized  by  the  soft  and  gentle  tones 
of  his  voice.  Everything  about  him  seemed  to  diffuse  good- 
ness. He  appeared  to  be  living  in  an  atmosphere  of  virtuous 
thought  and  kindly  purpose. 

His  whole  personality,  concluded  Mr.  Lansing, 
contradicted  this  record. 

Mr.  Lansing's  doubts  and  apprehensions  were 
not  shared  by  his  chief.  President  Wilson — so  M. 
Venizelos's  biographer,  Mr.  S.  B.  Chester  notes  on 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  55 

the  authority  of  Secretary  Josephus  Daniels,  "was 
said  to  have  placed  Venizelos  first  in  point  of  per- 
sonal ability  among  all  the  delegates"  at  Paris. 
Mr.  Wilson's  admiration  of  the  Greek  statesman's 
brilliant  qualities  dated  from  their  very  jSrst  meet- 
ing, to  which  reference  is  made  by  Dr.  Dillon  in 
his  "Inside  Story  of  the  Peace  Conference." 

M.  Venizelos  [writes  Dr.  Dillon]  hastened  to  call  on 
President  Wilson  as  soon  as  that  statesman  arrived  in  Europe, 
and,  to  the  surprise  of  many,  the  two  remained  a  long  time 
closeted  together.  "Whatever  did  you  talk  about?"  asked 
a  colleague  of  the  Greek  Premier.  "How  did  you  keep  Wilson 
interested  in  your  national  claims  all  that  time?  You  must 
have — "  "Oh  no,"  interrupted  the  modest  statesman.  "I 
disposed  of  our  claims  succinctly  enough.  A  matter  of  two 
minutes.  Not  more.  The  rest  of  the  time  I  was  getting  him 
to  give  me  the  benefit  of  his  familiarity  with  the  subject  of  the 
League  of  Nations.  T  was  greatly  impressed  by  what  he 
said. 

Notwithstanding  the  respect  and  sympathy  which 
from  the  time  of  this  conversation  he  conceived  for 
the  champion  of  the  Hellenic  cause,  and  with  the 
expressions  of  which  he  was  not  sparing,  Mr.  Wil- 
son to  the  very  last  supported  the  Bulgarian  claims 
against  Greece.  The  President  was  noted  for  his 
happy  fpculty  of  dissociating  personal  likes  and 
dislikes  from  considerations  of  State. 

Ill 

In  all  fairness  to  Mr.  Lansing  it  should  be  said 


56  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

that  his  perplexities  were  shared  by  not  a  few. 
The  character  of  Greece's  Prime  Minister  and 
quasi-dictator  was,  and  has  remained,  if  not  an 
enigma,  at  any  rate  a  controversial  subject. 
Largely,  there  were  in  the  West  of  Europe  three 
groups,  or  rather  layers,  of  opinion  concerning  him, 
graded  according  to  information  and  sophistica- 
tion, and  decreasing  proportionately. 

In  Allied  lands  the  large  majority  of  newspaper 
readers  naturally  swallowed  what  Mr.  Lansing 
would  call  the  orthodox  view,  promulgated  officially 
and  semi-officially  by  the  newspapers  and  the  in- 
numerable information  bureaus  and  other  propa- 
ganda agencies.  According  to  this  version,  Veni- 
zelos  was  perfection  itself,  one  of  the  great  men 
of  the  period,  the  saviour  of  his  country. 

As  the  one  criterion  by  which  this  judgment  was 
arrived  at  was  obviously  the  usefulness  of  M.  Veni- 
zelos  for  the  military  purposes  of  the  Allies,  a 
goodly  section  of  liberal  opinion  both  in  England 
and  America  was  anti-Venizelist,  holding  that  the 
Greek  statesman  was  a  militarist  and  imperialist, 
an  exceedingly  clever  but  also  exceedingly  un- 
scrupulous politician,  willing  though  hardly  blind 
tool  of  the  Entente.  This  "heterodoxy"  was  sub- 
stantially reinforced  by  the  high-handed  methods 
employed  by  the  Allies  to  curb  Constantine.  One 
weakness  of  liberals  is  their  a  priori  sympathy  for 
the  under  dog,  quite  frequently  uninquisitive  as  to 
whether  the  dog  in  question  deserved  his  nether 
position  or  not,  and  what  he  would  do  should  he 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  57 

get  uppermost.  Thus  there  arose  among  British 
Liberals  and  Labourites,  and  a  certain  section  of 
American  intellectuals  a  tender  regard  for  Con- 
stantine  unwarranted,  in  the  eyes  of  the  initiate, 
by  his  record,  and  explicable  only  as  a  reaction  to 
too  much  governmental  affection  for  Constantine's 
antagonist. 

The  third,  and  smallest  group  consisted  mostly 
of  officials  and  specialists  who  had  opportunity 
either  to  come  into  personal  contact  with  the  Greek 
Premier,  or  else  to  study  his  character  and  activi- 
ties from  close  range.  Some  of  these  men  had  ap- 
proached him  with  an  open-minded  expectancy  not 
entirely  untinged  by  diffidence,  determined  partly 
by  the  reasons  just  dissected,  and  partly  by  a  preju- 
dice somewhat  akin  to  Mr.  Lansing's  apprehen- 
sions. In  all  honesty  it  must  be  stated  that  there 
existed  in  the  West  a  distrust  of  Greece  in  general 
and  of  Greek  politicians  in  particular,  a  distrust 
which  broad-minded  and  cultivated  Greeks  de- 
plored, but  could  not,  in  their  heart  of  hearts  con- 
demn as  altogether  unjustified. 

M.  Venizelos  conquered  this  distrust.  There  were 
in  him,  below  the  layer  of  his  most  obvious  quali- 
ties,— his  eloquence,  his  tremendous  intellectual 
elan^  his  somewhat  cool  sweetness  of  temper,  and 
his  unswerving  directness  of  purpose, — qualities 
evoking  admiration  rather  than  affection, — a  cer- 
tain simplicity,  an  unusual  moderation — infallible 
mark  of  the  imaginative — and  an  indifference  to 
personal  advantage  that  inevitably  struck  those  who 


58  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

grew  familiar  with  him  or  his  record.  If  these 
traits,  labelled  by  Mr.  Lansing  as  Venizelos's  ideal- 
ism, and  distrusted  by  him  as  disingenuous,  con- 
stituted a  mask,  it  was  a  mask  that  fitted  perfectly 
and  behind  which  no  one  ever  peered.  If  this  ideal- 
ism was  not  genuine,  it  was  at  any  rate  never 
betrayed. 

IV 

What  was  the  record  of  this  remarkable  man 
which,  in  Mr.  Lansing's  wistful  words,  so  contra- 
dicted his  personality? 

Eleutherios  Venizelos  was  born  at  Canea,  in 
Crete,  on  August  23,  1864.  His  father  was  a  well- 
to-do  merchant  who  had  suffered  persecution  for 
his  Greek  patriotism  from  the  Turkish  rulers  of  the 
island.  His  advent  was  ushered  in  by  a  cycle  of 
legends — how  many  invented  ex  post  facto  it  is 
impossible  now  to  tell.  One  modestly  relates  how 
little  Venizelos  was  born  in  a  cattle-shed,  in  ful- 
filment of  his  mother's  vow  to  the  Virgin.  Accord- 
ing to  another  his  mother  had  dedicated  him  to  St. 
Eleutherios,  the  patron,  not  of  liberty,  but  of  de- 
livery. A  third  tells  us  that  the  priest  who  bap- 
tized him  said:  "I  baptize  thee  Eleutherios,  for 
thou  shalt  deliver  Crete  from  the  Turkish  yoke." 

A  fourth  story,  not  the  least  interesting  one,  is 
authentic.  Three  children  of  his  parents  had  died 
before  he  was  born.  So  the  couple  decided  to  fol- 
low with  him  the  one  safe  procedure,  which,  ac- 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  59 

cording  to  Cretan  belief,  consisted  in  pretending 
that  little  Eleutherios  was  a  foundling.  He  was, 
shortly  after  his  birth,  "deposited  comfortably  on 
dry  leaves  outside  of  his  father's  house,"  and  duly 
found  by  a  friend  of  the  family  who  "happened" 
to  pass  by.  The  friend  carried  the  infant  into  the 
house  and  "persuaded"  M.  and  Mme.  Venizelos 
to  adopt  him.  No  more  appropriate  debut  could 
be  imagined  for  one  destined  to  become  a  past  mas- 
ter in  the  fine  art  of  diplomatic  expediency. 

To  be  sure,  the  story  carries  a  slight  suggestion 
of  the  Moses  myth.  That  Venizelos  is  a  reincar- 
nation of  the  sun-god  is  not  on  record,  but  one 
cannot  vouch  for  the  rumours  that  will  circulate 
a  thousand  years  hence.  Besides,  there  is  some- 
thing just,  or  almost,  as  good.  M.  Caclamanos, 
Greek  Minister  to  the  Court  of  St.  James,  relates 
that  when  in  1899  M.  Clemenceau  returned  from  a 
visit  to  Greece  he  told  the  Comtesse  de  Noailles  that 
he  had  found  a  man — one  M.  Venizelos — or  was 
it  Venezuelos? — of  whom  "the  whole  of  Europe 
will  be  speaking  in  a  few  years." 

Old  M.  Venizelos  was  a  good  Greek.  But  he 
also  was  a  wise  father  and  a  shrewd  merchant.  He 
gave  his  son  such  education  as  the  facilities  of 
Canea  afforded.  When  these  were  exhausted  he 
wanted  him  to  enter  the  ancestral  firm.  Young 
Venizelos  said  he  preferred  to  continue  his  studies 
at  Athens.  But  the  father  would  not  hear  of  it. 
For  a  Cretan  Greek  it  would  never  do  to  have  too 
much  education.     Too  much  education  gave  one 


60  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

cravings  that  one  could  not  fulfill,  pretences  that 
one  could  not  live  up  to.  It  made  one  restless. 
Cretans  who  went  to  Athens  for  an  education 
usually  ended  by  becoming  revolutionists.  That 
was  bad  both  for  them  and  their  famihes.  The 
place  of  a  well-to-do  young  Cretan  was  in  the  home. 
Of  course,  Turkish  rule  was  a  nuisance  and  a  dis- 
grace and  all  that.  But  it  had  its  good  side ;  for  the 
Turks  cared  little  about  trade,  and  knew  less.  If 
one  only  kept  one's  peace  and  paid  one's  taxes  one 
was  allowed  to  thrive  and  prosper. 

A  bitter  dispute  between  father  and  son  ensued. 
It  was  settled  by  the  intercession  of  a  friend,  M. 
Zygomalas,  the  Greek  Consul  at  Canea.  Zygoma- 
las  recognized  the  unusual  stuff  that  was  in  young 
Venizelos,  and  induced  the  father  to  allow  him  to 
go  to  the  University  of  Athens.  Young  Venizelos 
went,  and  in  due  course  of  time  returned  with  the 
degree  of  LL.D.,  and  set  up  to  practice  the  law  at 
the  Cretan  capital. 

He  did  not  remain  long  at  it.  Old  M.  Venizelos 
was  a  wise  man.  In  Crete,  like  in  other  countries, 
the  law  is  the  jumping-off  board  to  politics  for  the 
ambitious.  But  in  Crete,  unlike  lands  of  less 
troubled  historic  climes,  being  a  politician  was 
merely  an  incidental  phase  to  a  larger,  more  excit- 
ing and  more  dangerous  game :  that  of  revolution. 

Young  Venizelos  had  no  illusions.  Neither  had 
he  fears.  From  the  outset  he  had  seen  his  road 
clearly.  He  knew  that  he  was  sent  to  bring  not 
peace,  but  a  sword — for  there  could  be  no  peace 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  61 

in  Crete  as  long  as  the  Turks  remained  there. 
There  wasn't  much  of  a  choice. 

I  had  to  decide  [he  said  later]  whether  I  would  be  a  lawyer 
by  profession  and  a  revolutionary  at  intervals,  or  a  revolu- 
tionary by  profession  and  a  lawyer  at  intervals. 

He  chose  the  profession  of  a  revolutionary. 

V 

It  was  in  the  seventeenth  century  that  Crete, 
ancient  land  of  Minos,  cradle  of  u^Egean  civiliza- 
tion, had  come,  after  a  rather  chequered  past  under 
Byzantine,  Latin  and  Venetian  domination,  under 
the  yoke  of  the  Turk.  A  number  of  the  natives 
adopted  Islam  in  order  to  avoid  persecution;  there 
was  some  very  slight  Turkish  military  coloniza- 
tion; but  the  majority  of  the  population  remained 
Greek  in  sentiment  and  Orthodox  in  religion,  and 
even  the  Moslem  converts  retained  their  Greek  lan- 
guage. In  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury the  Christian  majority  gained  rapidly.  By 
1900  the  Moslems  shrank  to  a  mere  handful. 

Between  1821  and  '27  Crete  participated  in  the 
Greek  insurrection,  but  when  in  1830  Greece 
achieved  independence,  the  Protecting  Powers, 
England,  France  and  Russia,  decided  with  that 
half-heartedness  which  was  to  remain  the  curse  of 
Near  Eastern  politics  for  another  eighty  years,  that 
the  largest  and  most  important  of  the  Greek  islands 
should  remain  under  Turkish  rule. 


62  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Until  1852,  under  the  exceptionally  decent  and 
enlightened  rule  of  Mustapha  Pasha,  an  Albanian 
appointed  from  Egypt  by  ^lehmet  Ali,  Crete  en- 
joyed comparative  quiet  and  prosperity.  But  in 
1852  Mustapha  Pasha  was  rewarded  by  promotion 
to  Grand  Vizier.  Four  years  later  a  rebellion 
broke  out,  and  thenceforth  until  1912  the  history  of 
Crete  is  a  series  of  revolts  tempered  by  intermittent 
truces.  These  outbreaks  usually  culminated  in  a 
declaration — not  of  independence,  but  of  union  with 
the  Kingdom  of  Greece — "Mother  Greece"  the 
Cretans  called  her;  and  more  than  once  the  Cretans 
would  have  had  their  way  but  for  the  interference 
of  the  Protecting  Powers,  so  called. 

The  record  of  the  Powers  in  the  Cretan  Question 
forms  one  of  the  stupidest  and  meanest  chapters 
in  that  book  of  stupidity  and  meanness,  nineteenth 
century  diplomatic  annals.  For  any  one  not  utterly 
devoid  of  vision  and  of  a  sense  of  fair  play,  it  must 
have  been  evident  that  the  Cretan  problem  admitted 
of  but  one  lasting  solution,  and  that  was  union  with 
Greece,  ardently  desired  by  a  substantial  majority 
of  the  natives.  But  the  doctors  of  Europe  decided 
that  the  Sick  Man  was  to  be  preserved  on  his  sick- 
bed, and  while  his  estate  was  suffered  to  go  to  the 
dogs,  his  dependents  were  expected  to  pay  the  bills 
of  physician  and  apothecary,  not  to  mention  the 
upkeep  of  the  policemen  needed  to  exact  payment. 

It  is  unnecessary  here  to  inquire  into  the  reasons ; 
in  ultimate  analysis  there  weren't  any,  for  the 
motives  of  the  Great  Powers  cannot  be  dignified 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  63 

by  that  name.  About  the  nearest  approach  to  an 
excuse  for  not  allowing  Crete  to  join  Greece  was 
that  the  Moslem  minority  needed  protection; 
though  why  the  powers  should  have  preferred  to 
"protect"  the  Christian  majority  under  Turkish 
government  to  safeguarding  the  Moslem  minority 
under  a  Greek  administration  no  one  not  born  and 
bred  a  diplomatist  can  fathom. 

Details  of  the  endless  squabbles  and  fights  can- 
not be  entered  here.  But  there  was  a  side-issue 
that  mirrored  the  main  problem  in  its  full  glory, 
even  as  the  tiniest  dewdrop  mirrors  the  mighty  sun. 
Since  the  days  of  Pasiphae  Crete  has  been  the  home 
of  strange  yearnings ;  and  in  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  the  first  decade  of  the  twen- 
tieth, the  governing  passion  of  Cretans  was  for  not 
possessing  a  flag  of  their  own.  They  said  they 
were  Greeks,  and  the  blue  flag  of  Greece  with  its 
white  St.  George's  Cross  was  good  enough  for 
them.  But  the  Protecting  Powers,  ever  intent  on 
protecting  the  Cretans  against  themselves,  insisted 
that  if  the  islanders  objected  to  the  Crescent  and 
Star,  they  must  have  a  flag  of  their  own. 

Accordingly,  after  much  squabble  and  some  ex- 
periment, a  Cretan  flag  was  devised — a  white  cross 
on  a  blue  field,  with  a  white  star  on  a  red  field  in 
the  canton.  One  can  imagine  the  four  Ambassadors 
(at  this  time  Italy  had  joined  the  Protectors) 
seated  around  a  table,  contemplating  the  design 
just  finished,  and  beaming  upon  one  another  in 
silent  congratulation  over  their  ingenuity  and  tact. 


64  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

For  not  only  were  the  colours  of  the  flag  borrowed 
from  the  Greek  and  Turkish  ensigns  respectively, 
with  even  the  numeric  proportion  of  Christians  and 
Moslems  expressed  in  the  relation  of  blue  and  red, 
but  the  Christians  could  rejoice  in  having  no  cres- 
cent to  wave  over  their  heads,  and  the  Moslems  in 
having  the  star. 

It  was  a  very  pretty  flag,  and  in  a  way  it  was 
a  perfect  solution.  Its  only  drawback  was  that  it 
did  not  solve  anything.  For  the  Cretan  Greeks 
refused  to  swallow,  as  it  were,  the  new  flag.  The 
moment  the  Admirals  and  Consuls,  representatives 
of  the  might  and  majesty  of  the  European  concert, 
looked  the  other  way,  down  went  the  Cretan  em- 
blem on  the  flagstaffs  of  the  public  buildings  at 
Canea,  and  up  went  the  standard  of  Greece.  After 
a  while  the  Admirals  discovered  in  horror  what  had 
happened,  and  issued  orders  to  strike  the  Greek 
flag  and  rehoist  the  Cretan.  Sometimes  the  orders 
were  obeyed.  At  other  times  they  were  not.  In  the 
latter  case  the  "protecting"  fleets  of  Europe  fired 
a  few  shots  at  the  "rebels,"  and  a  few  Cretans  died, 
and  the  Greek  flag  went  down,  and  a  good  time 
was  had  by  all,  including  the  Grand  Vizier  at  Con- 
stantinople, and  the  editors  in  Vienna  and  Berlin, 
who  for  the  day  were  spared  the  trouble  of  digging 
up  topics  for  special  articles  from  Meyer's  Con- 
versationslexicon. 

And  in  the  meantime  Turkish  tyranny  and  cor- 
ruption and  sloth  continued  under  the  protection 
of  the  naval  guns  of  His  Britannic  Majesty  and 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  65 

the  French  Republic,  not  to  mention  the  Czar  of 
all  the  Russians  and  the  King  of  Italy.  Occasion- 
ally — and  the  intervals  tended  to  grow  shorter — 
there  were  massacres  of  Cretan  Christians  by 
Cretan  Moslems,  immediately  followed  by  massa- 
cres of  Cretan  Moslems  by  Cretan  Christians,  both 
followed  by  ambassadorial  luncheon  discussions, 
and  a  note  or  two,  and  an  if'ade  or  two,  and  a  dozen 
editorials  in  European  newspapers,  solemnly  stat- 
ing that  a  final  settlement  of  the  Cretan  Question 
is  more  desirable  and  also  further  off  than  ever. 


VI 


In  1896  there  was  a  new  insurrection.  The 
Ethnike  Hetairia  of  Greece,  the  organization  of 
the  irredentists,  smuggled  arms  and  supplies  to  the 
rebels;  the  Greek  Colonel  Vassos,  a  brave  and  re- 
sourceful soldier,  landed  at  the  head  of  a  semi- 
official expeditionary  force.  In  February,  1897, 
Canea  was  set  on  fire  by  the  Moslems.  It  was 
during  that  conflagration,  says  Mr.  Chester  with 
an  ominousness  he  seems  to  be  unaware  of,  that 
Venizelos  rose  to  the  front  rank  of  Cretan  leaders. 

By  May  the  Cretan  events  precipitated  war  be- 
tween Greece  and  Turkey.  It  was  a  short  war — 
the  Greeks  were  utterly  beaten  in  a  month  and  a 
day,  and  sued  for  peace.  But  the  Cretan  revolt 
continued  for  a  few  months  longer,  although  Col- 
onel Vassos  and  his  little  army  had  been  recalled  to 
the  mainland  to  serve  with  the  Greek  army. 


66  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

For  the  Cretan  insurgents  the  campaign  meant 
fighting  not  only  the  Turkish  regulars  and  their 
native  Moslem  confederates,  but  also  the  troops  of 
the  "protecting"  Powers  garrisoned  in  Crete.  Veni- 
zelos,  the  young  lawyer  of  Canea,  was  at  war  with 
Europe.  When  in  1916  Venizelos,  as  head  of  his 
home-made  Salonica  government,  declared  war  on 
the  Central  Powers  there  were  those  who  could  not 
help  perceiving  the  humour  of  the  situation  and 
smiled  at  such  exuberance  of  private  enterprise. 
For  Venizelos  it  was  vieucc  jeu;  for  as  early  as 
1896-'97,  and  later  in  1905,  he  had  been  fighting 
England,  France,  Russia  and  Italy — not  to  men- 
tion Turkey.  It  was  a  mere  accident  that  he  did 
not  meet  with  his  death  when  the  Protectors  of 
Crete  shelled  his  headquarters  at  Akrotiri. 

All  the  qualities  which  in  his  later  career  called 
forth  such  admiration  were  already  in  evidence 
during  the  Akrotiri  rebellion ;  his  reasoned,  unemo- 
tional eloquence,  his  sangfroid,  above  all,  his  mod- 
eration— most  unusual  trait  in  a  revolutionist  on 
field  duty.  A  British  naval  officer  who  was  sent  to 
negotiate  with  the  rebels  was  struck  by  nothing  so 
much  as  by  the  respectability  of  their  leader.  He 
described  Venizelos  as  a  "quiet,  reasonable  young 
man"  who  fully  realized  the  predicament  of  the 
Powers. 

"Go  slow  with  the  Porte,"  Venizelos  said.  "Make  a  feint 
of  coercing  us  if  you  have  to — I  shall  restrain  my  men." 

"Why  don't  you  trust  us  implicitly.''"  countered  the  British 
representative,  "instead  of  forcing  our  hand.''" 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  67 

Venizelos's  answer  is  the  classic  statement  of 
the  case  of  Near  East  Christians  against  the 
Powers  of  Europe. 

"The  European  policy,"  he  said,  "is  invariably  the  mainten- 
ance of  the  status  quo,  and  you  will  do  nothing  for  the  sub- 
ject races  unless  we,  by  taking  the  initiative,  make  you 
realize  that  helping  us  against  the  Turks  is  the  lesser  of  the 
evils." 

"Damn  it,  the  beggar  is  right!"  wrote  the  Englishman.* 

The  story  of  the  Akrotiri  revolt  condenses  in  a 
strangely  graphic  way  Venizelos's  subsequent  ca- 
reer. It  presents  his  tendency  to  rise,  skyrocket- 
like, to  sudden  splendour,  and  vanish  again  in  utter 
darkness.  In  August,  1897,  he  was  elected  Presi- 
dent of  the  Insurrectionary  Assembly.  He  was 
uncompromisingly  in  favour  of  union  with  Greece ; 
but  things  did  not  go  well  with  the  revolutionists, 
and  by  one  of  those  lightning  reversals  of  senti- 
ment which  seem  to  be  a  feature  of  Greek  politics, 
the  party  opposing  outright  annexation  and  con- 
tent with  autonomy  under  Turkish  suzerainty 
swelled  into  a  majority  overnight.  Venizelos  was 
not  only  forced  to  resign  from  the  chair,  but  was 
formally  excluded  from  the  Assembly. 

Now  in  Western  Europe  a  blow  like  that  would 
be  enough  to  kill  a  politician,  figuratively.  In  the 
primitive,  though  not  unsophisticated,  Near  East, 
where  armed  force  is  not  the  symbol  and  ultima 

•  Quoted  by  Dr.  Herbert  Adams  Gibbona. 


68  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

ratio,  but  the  immediate  executor  of  political  power, 
it  is  almost  enough  to  kill  a  politician  bodily. 

Eleutherios  Venizelos  [wrote  Biliotti,  the  British  Consul- 
General  at  Canea,  to  Constantinople],  whose  appointment  as 
President  has  been  cancelled  by  the  General  Assembly,  and 
his  partisans,  twelve  in  number,  were  kept  prisoners  during 
eight  hours  in  a  house  at  Archanes,  which  the  mob  threatened 
to  set  fire  to,  and  they  were  stoned  nearly  everywhere  during 
their  twelve  days'  return  journey  to  Akrotiri. 

And  Admiral  Harris,  the  British  naval  officer  in 
command,  reported  that  Venizelos  "narrowly  es- 
caped being  killed  by  the  populace."  The  Admi- 
ral's report  is  noteworthy  because  it  brings  into 
rehef  a  highly  significant  trait  of  Venizelian  strat- 
egy. The  Admiral  accuses  Venizelos  and  his  an- 
nexationist friends  of  secretly  encouraging  the 
Turks  to  remain  on  the  island,  as  autonomy,  by 
curing  the  worst  evils,  would  delay  union  with 
Greece,  while  continuation  of  the  Turkish  tyranny 
would  hasten  that  event. 

The  insurrection,  like  the  Greek  campaign  on 
the  mainland,  ended  in  defeat.  Nevertheless  Crete 
— and  here  for  once  the  Protecting  Powers  deserve 
some  credit — emerged  with  important  gains.  Union 
with  Greece,  voted  as  a  matter  of  routine  by  the 
Assembly,  was  of  course  nullified;  but  autonomy 
was  granted,  and  Prince  George,  second  son  of  the 
King  of  the  Hellenes,  was  appointed  High  Com- 
missioner under  Ottoman  suzerainty.  The  popula- 
tion clamoured  for  the  withdrawal  of  the  Turkish 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  69 

troops.  Fulfilment  of  this  wish  might  have  taken 
some  time,  had  not  the  Moslem  hotheads  of  Canea 
committed  the  indiscretion  of  massacring  a  hand- 
ful of  British  bluejackets.  Thereupon  the  Powers 
ordered  the  Porte  to  evacuate  the  island,  and  the 
last  of  the  Turkish  soldiery  embarked  in  November. 

VII 

Venizelos  was  defeated,  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life — not  for  the  last.  Within  a  year  he  was  on 
his  feet  again.  His  career  resembles  that  of  the 
Greek  flag  on  Crete.  He  could  not  be  kept  down 
for  any  length  of  time.  A  few  months  passed,  and 
he  was  elected  one  of  the  Executive  Committee  of 
five,  in  charge  pending  the  arrival  of  Prince 
George.  A  little  later  the  new  High  Commissioner 
appointed  him  one  of  his  seven  Councillors — Min- 
isters of  State  in  everything  save  title.  Venizelos 
dominated  the  Council.  Although  he  held  the  port- 
folio of  justice,  he  was  practically  Foreign  Min- 
ister, and  negotiated  with  the  Powers  concerning 
domestic  reform  and  financial  assistance. 

His  relations  with  the  Prince  were  strained  from 
the  first.  George  was  inexperienced — he  was 
haughty,  rash  and  vain,  self-willed  and  officious. 
In  his  first  interview  with  M.  Sphakianakis,  ven- 
erable dean  of  Cretan  leaders,  the  Prince  found  it 
opportune  to  announce  that  he  had  the  blood  of 
Peter  the  Great  in  his  veins. 

"I  hope  that  your  Highness  will  at  least  spare  us 


70  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

the  executions,"  replied  M.  Sphakianakis  in  the 
suavest  tones. 

According  to  Mr.  Chester,  Prince  George  com- 
bined the  appetite  for  intrigue  with  a  marked  lack 
of  talent  for  it.  He  was  constantly  touring  the 
European  courts — he  was  closely  related  to  the 
Kings  of  England  and  Denmark,  and  to  the  Czar. 
The  expenses  were  borne  by  the  Cretan  people. 
But  it  was  all  for  their  good,  said  the  Prince.  He 
was  sure  he  would  achieve  results  by  virtue  of  his 
family  connections. 

Before  long  the  Prince's  administration  degen- 
erated into  a  petty  tyranny  hardly  less  odious  than 
that  of  the  Turkish  valis  of  old.  Oppression,  chi- 
canery, favouritism,  corruption  were  rampant.  In 
1901  Venizelos  was  dismissed.  He  at  once  took 
the  lead  of  the  opposition  in  the  Assembly. 

During  the  following  four  years  Prince  George's 
rule  assumed  more  and  more  the  character  of  a 
minor  brand  of  White  Terror.  Cretans  despaired ; 
public  opinion  in  Greece  was  scandalized;  never- 
theless the  "family  connections"  set  through  the 
renewal  of  the  Prince's  mandate  for  another  term. 
The  opposition,  though  teased  and  terrorized  in  a 
hundred  ways,  limited  itself  to  parliamentary  chan- 
nels. But  in  March,  1905,  the  news  was  flashed 
across  Europe  that  M.  Venizelos,  at  the  head  of  a 
little  army,  had  taken  to  the  hills. 

This  time  it  was  not  against  the  Turks.  There 
were  no  more  Turks  left  in  the  island.  It  was 
Venizelos  vs.  the  House  of  Gliicksburg — prelim- 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  71 

inary  skirmish  of  a  much  more  famous  battle  to 
come.  Venizelos  charged  that  Prince  George  had 
overridden  his  mandate,  nuHified  the  constitution, 
and  had  become  the  leader  of  a  political  party. 

The  insurrection  of  1905  is  known  as  that  of 
Therisso.  There  was  the  usual  squabbling,  some 
desultory  fighting  between  insurgents  on  the  one 
hand  and  international  troops  on  the  other.  There 
was  the  usual  declaration  of  union  with  Greece,  first 
by  the  insurgents,  then  by  the  Assembly  at  Canea, 
under  the  very  nose  of  the  Prince  and  the  European 
admirals.  Up  went  the  Greek  flag — down  it  went 
again.  The  rebels  needed  money.  Venizelos  tried 
to  borrow  100,000  francs  in  Greece.    He  failed. 

His  ascendency  over  his  countrymen  was  now 
unquestioned  and  unassailable.  His  statesmanship 
again  evoked  admiring  comment  from  his  oppon- 
ents, the  international  agents.  The  French  Consul- 
General,  like  the  British  naval  officer  eight  years 
ago,  was  struck,  above  all,  by  his  moderation.  M. 
Maurouard  noted  in  one  of  his  dispatches  that  in  a 
speech  made  at  Therisso  before  the  insurgents 
"M.  Venizelos  was  not  responsible  for  a  single 
violent  remark." 

Violent  remarks  were  left  to  the  exclusive  use  of 
Prince  George,  who  in  various  communications  ad- 
dressed to  the  European  chancelleries  and  in  his 
statements  to  the  press  spoke  with  extreme  bitter- 
ness of  the  mis-  and  malfeasances  of  M.  Venizelos, 
attributed  his  insurgency  to  vanity  and  thwarted 
ambition,  protested  his  own  innocence,  and  even 


72  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

accused   some  of   the   Consuls   and   international 
military  officers  of  collusion  with  the  rebels. 

But  then,  the  Prince's  patience  was  sorely  tried. 
His  very  IMinisters  deserted  him,  and  joined  the 
insurgents.  The  Assembly  at  Canea  demonstrated 
its  loyalty  by  adopting  a  series  of  reforms,  provid- 
ing for  restrictions  of  the  High  Commissioner's 
prerogative,  extending  the  suffrage,  and  abolishing 
press  censorship — all  carefully  copied  from  the  bill 
of  grievances  with  which  the  insurgents  had  taken 
the  field. 

By  November  the  Therisso  revolt  collapsed. 
Venizelos  and  his  supporters,  having  obtained 
amnesty  from  the  representatives  of  the  Powers, 
surrendered  their  arms. 

Once  more  Venizelos  was  knocked  out.  Once 
more  he  fell — upwards.  Within  a  few  months  he 
was  back  at  his  old  job  negotiating  with  the  Powers 
for  additional  reforms.  Within  a  year  his  opponent, 
Prince  George,  descendant  of  Peter  the  Great  and 
cousin  to  half  the  monarchs  of  Europe,  found  it 
advisable  to  board  a  Greek  warship  in  a  hurry  and 
with  omission  of  music  and  flowers.  He  was  sup- 
planted by  M.  Zaimis,  an  experienced  and  decent 
politician,  nominated  with  European  authority  by 
the  King  of  Greece. 

M.  Zaimis  found  in  Venizelos  a  willing  co- 
operator.  By  the  middle  of  1909  the  situation  was 
consolidated  to  such  extent  that  the  Powers  agreed 
to  withdraw  their  troops  from  the  island.  Venizelos, 
says  his  biographer,  was  sufficiently  satisfied  to 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  73 

make  an  eloquent  speech  in  honour  of  the  departing 
internationals.  Lack  of  a  sense  of  humour  was 
never  one  of  the  defects  of  Venizelos's  qualities. 

With  the  removal  of  the  European  troops  Crete 
was,  in  everything  but  name,  a  part  of  Greece. 
Henceforth  justice  was  administered,  decrees  were 
promulgated,  in  the  name  of  the  King  of  the  Helle- 
nes. Greek  officers  trained  and  commanded  the 
gendarmerie.  Formally,  however,  the  union  was 
not  proclaimed  until  the  outbreak  of  the  Balkan 
war  in  1912,  and  even  then  the  Powers  withheld  for 
another  eight  months  their  recognition  of  a  status 
that  had  obtained  for  five  years. 

There  is  a  story  of  the  New  York  Jew  who 
wandered  into  a  delicatessen  store,  and,  pointing  to 
a  juicy  ham,  demanded  a  pound  of  "that  cheese." 
"I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  the  dispenser  of  viands, 
"that  is  ham,  not  cheese."  "Are  you  here  to  wait  on 
me  or  to  argue  with  me?"  snapped  the  customer. 
"I  say  I  want  a  pound  of  that  cheese."  He  got  it. 
One  of  the  great  traditions  of  European  statecraft 
was  to  call  a  de  facto  ham  a  de  lure  cheese,  whenever 
required  by  its  ritual. 

VIII 

By  1909  Venizelos  achieved  everything  there  was 
to  be  achieved  in  his  native  island.  Crete,  like 
Macedon  for  Alexander,  had  grown  too  narrow  for 
him.  But  the  wider  opportunity  was  already  in  the 
offing. 

On    January    10,    1910,    Venizelos    landed    at 


74  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Piraeus.  He  was  forty-six  years  old.  For  the  next 
ten  years,  remarks  his  biographer,  the  story  of 
Venizelos  is  the  history  of  Greece. 

He  was  invited  to  act  as  official  peacemaker  in  the 
dispute  between  the  Military  League  and  King 
George.  The  dispute  was  the  aftermath  of  nothing 
less  than  a  coup  d'etat.  Half  a  year  earlier  the 
officers  who  had  formed  the  League  marched  out 
to  Goudi  Hill,  near  Athens,  encamped  there  and 
sent  an  ultimatum  to  Premier  RalHs.  The  ulti- 
matum demanded  reforms  in  military  and  civil 
administration.  Above  all,  it  demanded  the  re- 
signation of  the  Crown  Prince  Constantine  as  Com- 
mander-in-Chief, and  the  removal  of  his  brothers 
from  the  army. 

Princes  of  the  Blood  are  seldom  popular  in 
armies.  They  are  too  lively  a  reminder  of  the  un- 
equal distribution  of  duties  and  rewards  in  this 
world.  The  officers'  corps  of  a  European  army  is 
like  a  club.  However  snobbish  and  narrowly  ex- 
clusive it  may  appear  to  the  undesired  outsider, 
usually  full  equality  reigns  within.  Now  in  the 
democracy,  genuine  though  restricted,  of  an  offi- 
cers' corps  Princes  of  the  Blood,  as  a  rule,  con- 
stitute an  anomaly  of  insufferable  prerogative.  In 
peace  time  they  are  a  nuisance;  in  war  they  may 
amount  to  a  positive  danger.  Eugene  of  Savoy, 
the  ablest  general  that  ever  served  the  Hapsburgs, 
himself  a  Prince,  never  accepted  a  command  with- 
out stipulating  that  Archdukes  would  be  strictly 
kept  at  home. 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  75 

The  Greek  Princes  were  numerous.  They  came 
from  an  unusually  overbearing  breed.  Routine 
promotion  was  slow.  The  country  was  poor.  Pay 
cheques  for  the  officers  were  not  infrequently  a  few 
weeks  behindhand.  The  cases  of  champagne  for  the 
Princes  were  always  on  time.  Some  of  the  officers 
were  patriots ;  others  may  have  been  firebrands ;  the 
majority  were  just  plain  human  beings  with  a  griev- 
ance. They  discovered  certain  dehcious  secrets, 
well  known  to  carpenters  and  stonemasons,  but  as 
a  rule  without  the  scope  of  the  more  aristocratic 
professions.  They  formed  a  trade  union  and  struck. 
They  established  strike  headquarters  on  Mount 
Goudi.  Unfortunately  for  their  employer,  the 
government,  it  was  impossible  to  send  the  army 
against  them ;  for  in  this  case  the  strikers  happened 
to  be  the  army. 

The  effect  of  the  officers'  ultimatum  was  over- 
whelming. M.  Rallis  resigned  almost  before  he  had 
read  it  to  the  end.  The  Princes,  including  the 
Commander-in-Chief,  followed  suit.  M.  Dragoumis 
was  named  Premier  at  the  head  of  what  on  the 
continent  is  called  a  cabinet  d'affaires.  He  had  the 
backing  of  the  Military  League. 

At  the  court  consternation  reigned.  The  King 
feared  revolution.  Uncertainty  followed  the  first 
shock ;  for  the  coup  did  not  prove  a  settlement.  The 
officers  had  talked  politics  for  years — Greeks  hardly 
ever  do  anything  else.  But  now  the  officers  tasted 
acting  politics,  and  found  it  good.  Soon  their  saner 
leaders  perceived  that  measures  to  prevent  trees 


7G  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

from  growing  to  the  sky  were  in  order.  There  was 
one  man,  and  one  only,  in  the  Hellenic  world  to 
handle  the  situation.  The  leaders  of  the  Military 
League  sent  a  delegation  to  Crete  to  fetch 
Venizelos. 

Venizelos  arrived,  and  called  on  the  King  with 
the  plein  pouvoir  of  the  officers.  King  George  had 
no  reason  to  like  the  man  who  had  spoiled  his 
son's  sojourn  in  Crete  so  effectively.  This  man 
now  came  as  the  ambassador  of  rebels.  "I  hope," 
said  King  George  to  a  friend  "that  M.  Veni- 
zelos will  soon  be  hanged  from  the  mast  of  a 
battleship." 

The  pious  wish  was  not  fulfilled,  and  before  long 
the  King  had  occasion  to  mend  his  opinion.  The 
devil  is  never  so  black  as  he  is  painted — not  even  a 
Cretan  devil.  M.  Venizelos  brought  with  him  to 
Athens  the  gift  that  had  earned  him  in  Crete  the 
respect  and  admiration  of  the  European  representa- 
tives. It  was  moderation.  If  he  was  a  revolu- 
tionary adventurer,  his  manner  strangely  resembled 
that  of  a  conservative  statesman.  If  he  was  a 
gambler,  he  gambled  with  such  perspicacity  that  the 
game  was  undistinguishable  from  legitimate  busi- 
ness. He  knew  that  if  you  only  give  Time  a  chance 
it  will  work  for  you.  He  possessed  one  of  the  rarest 
as  well  as  most  effective  faculties — mastery  of  the 
fine  art  of  waiting.  To  be  able  to  sit  still  with  a 
nonchalant  dignity;  not  to  shoot  until  you  see  the 
whites  of  Opportunity's  eyes,  is  the  key  to  success 
in  diplomacy  and  war,  also  in  that  combination 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  77 

of  diplomacy  and  war,  love.  Marlborough  had 
that  faculty,  and  Cavour;  so  did  Casanova.  It  is 
a  gift  indispensable  to  snipers — and  to  makers  of 
history. 

Venizelos  succeeded  in  appeasing  the  old  King. 
A  revolutionary  who  has  mended  his  ways  makes 
the  best  minister,  a  French  statesman  once  re- 
marked. The  King  was  scared  out  of  his  wits  by 
the  prospect  of  a  National  Assembly,  demanded  by 
the  Military  League  and  by  Venizelos.  The  King, 
as  amateur  Freudians  would  say,  had  a  complex  on 
National  Assemblies.  He  had  seen  one  in  his  youth. 
It  was  the  foregathering  which  deposed  his  prede- 
cessor. Otto  of  Bavaria,  and  set  him  on  the  throne 
of  Greece. 

King  George,  unlike  his  sons,  was  a  very  astute 
diplomatist.  But  he  was  no  match  for  Venizelos. 
In  the  end  the  Cretan  had  his  way.  His  winning 
move  was  a  hravoure  in  the  best  Venizelian  manner. 
He  told  the  King  that  on  the  day  when  the  National 
Assembly  convened  the  Military  League  would  be 
dissolved.  Never  has  a  single  stroke  killed  two 
flies  more  thoroughly.  Venizelos  won  the  King's 
heart.  He  also  got  rid  of  the  Military  League.  The 
Cretan,  too,  had  a  good  memory.  He  remembered 
the  fate  of  Colonel  Lapathiotis,  the  officer  whom  the 
League  had  set  up  as  Minister  of  War  in  August 
and  pulled  down  in  December  for  being  too  in- 
dependent in  his  appointments.  "Sometimes  a  dead 
ally  beats  a  dozen  live  enemies,"  says  a  Malay 
proverb, 


78  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

IX 

In  October,  1910,  Venizelos  was  appointed 
Premier.  He  had  a  very  substantial  majority  in 
the  National  Assembly,  and  he  ran  the  business  with 
a  smooth  efficiency  that  was  a  novelty  at  Athens. 
He  immediately  started  general  housecleaning — 
reorganization  of  home  government,  finances,  army, 
navy.  And  he  began  to  lay  the  foundations  of  that 
foreign  policy  which  culminated  in  the  two  victori- 
ous wars  of  1912  and  '13. 

Within  half  a  year  of  his  appointment  Venizelos 
sprang  a  surprise.  He  rehabilitated  the  Crown 
Prince  Constantine.  In  the  first  transaction  that 
brought  these  two  men  together  Venizelos  played 
the  role  of  Santa  Claus  and  guardian  angel  com- 
bined. 

Constantine's  first  appearance  before  European 
pubHcity  was  in  the  ill-starred  war  of  1897,  in  which 
he  held  a  command.    A  chronicler,  commenting  on 
his  qualifications  for  the  post,  remarks  that  Con- 
stantine's cuisine  was  the  best  prepared  sector  of 
the  Greek  front.    Fortunately  for  Greece,  the  war 
was  over  in  thirty  days  and  one.    Returning  home 
from  a  lost  war   belongs   with  the  less  pleasant 
features  of  a  Prince's  routine.    Napoleon  III,  him- 
self an  expert,  declared  with  envy  that  Francis 
Joseph  was  the  only  monarch  in  Europe  whom  his 
people  cheered  after  a  defeat  in  the  field.     The 
campaign  of  1897  did  not  make  Constantine  very 
popular  in  Greece. 


THE  RISE  OF  VENTZELOS  79 

In  1909  Constantine,  yielding  to  the  ultimatum 
of  the  Military  League,  resigned  from  the  post  of 
Commander-in-Chief  and  went  to  Berlin  to  find 
solace. 

What  could  be  Venizelos's  motive  in  restoring 
Constantine  to  good  standing  in  the  army?  The 
answer,  though  a  complex  one,  may  be  guessed  at. 
Constantine  was  unpopular  with  the  officers,  who 
despite  the  disbandment  of  the  Military  League 
stiU  formed  Venizelos's  mainstay.  The  Premier 
incurred  grave  risks  in  championing  the  Crown 
Prince.  But  Constantine  was  not  nearly  so  un- 
popular with  the  officers  as  Venizelos  was  with  the 
Elder  Statesmen  of  Athens.  These  politicians  had 
been  efficient  only  in  running  the  machine  of  their 
own  ascendency.  Venizelos  wrecked  that  machine. 
The  politicians  perceived  that  as  long  as  he  stayed 
among  them  the  machine  could  not  be  repaired; 
also,  that  he  had  come  to  stay.  This  provincial 
shyster — this  Highlander  who  tucked  his  trousers 
into  his  boots — this  professional  rebel — this  ex-com- 
itadji — presumed  to  beat  them  at  their  own  game. 
The  politicians  despised  him  as  a  backwoods- 
man and  a  parvenu;  they  hated  him  as  the  Anti- 
Christ. 

Did  Venizelos  need  an  ally  ?  With  all  his  faults, 
Constantine  had  his  good  qualities.  He  was  a  good 
fellow,  in  his  way;  he  was  not  over-intelligent. 
Venizelos  discerned  in  him  the  makings  of  a  splen- 
did figure-head.  The  first  rumblings  of  the  coming 
Balkan  war  were  just  growing  audible.     Veni- 


80  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

zelos,  coldest-blooded  of  men,  was  generous  not  so 
much  by  impulse  as  by  reasoned  conviction. 
When  the  Archbishop  of  Canea,  prompted  by 
Prince  George,  excommunicated  him  as  the  leader 
of  the  Therisso  rebeUion,  he  countered  the  move 
by  advising  the  people  of  Crete  to  respect  and  obey 
the  church.  What  could  the  Archbishop  answer  to 
that? 

He  saw  that  sooner  or  later  he  would  have  to 
deal  with  the  heir  to  the  throne — why  not  disarm 
him  before  he  even  had  a  chance  to  arm  himself? 

Venizelos  trusted  his  own  ability  to  restrain  the 
undue  growth  of  trees  toward  the  sky.  He  in- 
troduced a  bill  creating  the  post  of  Inspector- 
General  of  the  army.  The  bill  was  passed. 
Constantine  was  appointed. 

The  two  Balkan  wars  were  fought,  and  the  peace 
of  Bucarest  was  concluded.  It  was  in  the  course  of 
the  negotiations  of  the  London  treaty,  preliminary 
to  the  second  war,  that  Venizelos  was  recognized  as 
a  star  of  the  first  magnitude  on  the  firmament  of 
European  politics.  To  the  Great  Powers  Venizelos 
was  the  conference.  M.  Clemenceau's  prediction 
was  fulfilled. 

It  was  in  October,  1910,  on  the  eve  of  his  appoint- 
ment to  Premier,  that  Venizelos  said  to  King 
George : 

If  your  Majesty  consents  to  leave  me  full  liberty  of  action 
and  to  ratify  my  program,  I  promise  to  present  you  in  five 
years  with  a  renovated  Greece,  capable  of  inspiring  respect 
and  of  supporting  her  rights. 


THE  RISE  OF  VENIZELOS  81 

Moderation  of  statement  was  always  a  dominant 
trait  in  Venizelos.  He  promised  to  the  King  a  re- 
novated Greece  in  five  years.  Within  three  he 
presented  with  a  doubled  Greece,  not  George  him- 
self, for  the  old  King  had  been  assassinated  at 
Salonica,  but  his  son  and  successor,  Constantine. 

Yet  there  was  one  thing  that  the  Cretan  states- 
man who  had  fought  four  Great  Powers  and 
survived  it,  who  within  a  year  brought  two  wars  to 
triumphant  conclusion,  who  even  managed  to  over- 
come the  camarilla  of  the  Elder  Statesmen  of 
Athens,  could  not  conquer.  It  was  the  inborn  dif- 
fidence of  the  House  of  Gliicksburg.  Old  King 
George  had  said  to  M.  Caclamanos:  "Venizelos  is 
by  far  the  ablest  statesman  Greece  has  produced 
during  my  reign."  Nevertheless — or  shall  I  say 
consequently? — the  King  summoned  his  old  con- 
fidant, M.  Streit,  then  Greek  Minister  in  Vienna, 
to  enter  Venizelos's  cabinet.  "M.  Venizelos  will 
bear  watching,"  said  the  King. 

There  never  was  any  love  lost  between  Eleu- 
therios  Venizelos  and  the  House  of  Schleswig- 
Holstein-Sonderburg-Gliicksburg. 


CONSTANTINE  AND  THE  FALL 
OF  VENIZELOS 


CONSTANTINE  AND  THE  FALL 
OF  VENIZELOS 


Were  the  making  of  history  entrusted  to  writers 
of  motion  picture  scenarios,  they  could  not  devise 
a  more  dramatic,  even  melodramatic,  contrast  than 
that  separating  the  antagonists  in  the  duel  which 
was  destined  to  be  Greece's  contribution  to  the 
annals  of  the  Great  War.  Constantine,  scion  of  a 
North  German  princely  house,  huge,  fair,  sanguine, 
shrewd  though  not  too  intelligent,  bellicose  and 
proud,  with  a  joviality  only  too  often  swept  away 
by  flashes  of  temper,  amiable  on  the  surface,  cruel 
and  self-centered  at  bottom,  wilful  rather  than 
strong-willed,  is  the  typical  aristocrat — if  we  accept 
the  blond  beast  as  a  definition  of  aristocracy.  Veni- 
zelos,  the  thoroughbred  Levantine,  small,  wiry, 
undistinguished  of  feature,  as  supple  physically  as 
mentally,  with  a  lightning  intellect,  a  will  like  a 
Damascene  blade,  at  once  lithe  and  ruthless,  a  man- 
ner of  extreme  suavity  screening  a  cold  glow  of 
passion,  is  the  ideal  of  the  man  risen  from  the  people 
— but  a  people  whose  plebeian  tradition  is  two  thou- 
sand years  older  than  the  heritage  of  the  proudest 
Northern  aristocracy. 

as 


86  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

This  contrast  is  in  no  wise  weakened  by  the  para- 
dox that  temperamentally  Constantine  is  the 
more  democratic  of  the  two.  In  Europe  a  certain 
spirit  of  good  fellowship,  the  quality  which  Ameri- 
cans describe  as  being  a  good  mixer,  is  more  often 
found  in  the  politician  of  aristocratic  antecedents 
than  in  the  leader  of  democracy;  for,  while  the 
former,  on  account  of  his  independence,  can  afford 
to  be  a  democrat,  in  the  latter  years  of  solitary 
struggle  engender  an  intellectual  contempt  for  the 
human  material  that  is  only  too  apt  to  be  reflected 
in  outward  behaviour  as  aloofness.  Indeed,  this 
aloofness  was  ever  one  of  Venizelos's  most  marked 
characteristics — and  one  which,  as  both  his  enemies 
and  friends  agree,  contributed  in  no  mean  degree  to 
his  phenomenal  fall. 

No  one  is  likely  to  challenge  the  definition  of 
Constantine  as  an  aristocratic  type.  After  all,  that 
type  has  its  variants  no  less  than  democracy.  Gen- 
eral Gordon  was  an  aristocratic  type — so  was 
George  Gordon,  Lord  Byron;  so  are  the  Duke  of 
Northumberland  and  Lord  Robert  Cecil.  The 
range  is  wide  enough. 

But  there  will  be  those  who  object  to  the  descrip- 
tion of  M.  Venizelos  as  a  leader  of  democracy.  Is 
not  his  record,  these  protestants  will  point  out,  one 
of  militant  imperialism,  of  exclusive  nationalism? 
True  enough.  The  democracy  of  which  M.  Veni- 
zelos is  a  leader  and  a  prototype  is  the  democracy, 
not  of  the  Russian,  but  of  the  French  revolution; 
and  the  democracy  of  the  French  revolution  was 


Brown  Bros. 


KING    CONSTANTINE    OF    GREECE 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS       87 

militant  and  imperialistic.  It  was  not  narrowly 
national ;  but  it  was  the  father  of  modern  national- 
ism. The  democratic  ideal  of  M.  Venizelos  is  a 
Greater  Greece,  uniting  within  its  boundaries  all 
the  redeemed  groups  and  segments  of  the  Hellenic 
race,  governed  by  an  all-Hellenic  parliament.  It 
is  a  political,  as  distinguished  from  a  social,  concept 
of  democracy;  its  stamp  is  of  the  year  1848  rather 
than  of  1922. 

Mr.  Justice  Brandeis  once  referred  to  Secretary 
Hughes  as  one  of  the  most  enlightened  minds  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  One  may  call  Venizelos  one  of 
the  greatest  statesmen  of  the  early  nineteenth 
century, — perhaps  the  greatest  statesman  of  the 
spirit,  born  of  French  parentage  in  the  Germany  of 
Stein  and  Hardenberg  and  Korner,  carried  at  once 
to  victory  and  defeat  by  the  Allied  arms  at  Leipzig, 
stifled  by  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  resurrected  and 
downed  again  in  1849.  Of  all  European  countries 
that  spirit  rose  to  full  fruition  in  Italy  alone.  The 
Balkan  war  of  1912,  which  brought  M.  Venizelos  to 
European  prominence,  was  the  last  wingbeat  but 
one  of  the  national  risorgimento  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  The  last  was  the  phase  of  the  World  War 
which  liberated  the  oppressed  races  of  Austria- 
Hungary  and  restored  Poland.  The  difference  be- 
tween the  democracy  of  President  Masaryk  of 
Czechoslovakia  and  that  of  Premier  Venizelos  of 
Greece  is  the  difference  between  the  economic 
development  of  Western  and  Eastern  Europe  re- 
spectively, A.D.  1918. 


88  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

With  their  characteristics,  physical  and  mental, 
presenting  such  glaring   antithesis,   is   there  any 
wonder  that  partisanship,  in  no  issue  of  the  war 
bitterer,  should  have  indulged  in  conceiving  the  duel 
of  Venizelos  and  Constantine  as  that  of  Good  and 
Evil,  of  Light  and  Darkness,  of  Ahuramazda  and 
Ahriman?    The  files  of  the  Constantine-Venizelos 
polemics  furnish  the  supreme  instances  of  what  may 
be    called    the    demonological    interpretation    of 
history.    In  this  case  Aliuramazda  and  Ahriman  are 
interchangeable.    According  to  one  school,  there  is 
no  virtue  of  which  Venizelos  is  not  the  incarnation, 
there  is  no  vice,  no  depravity  of  which  Constantine 
is  not  the  horrible  example  for  all  ages.    Turn  the 
names  around,  and  you  have  the  exegesis  and  apolo- 
getics of  the  other  religion.     In  the  heat  of  this 
theological  controversy  the  very  characteristics  of 
the   opponents   are  exchanged;   to   Constantinists 
their  hero  appears  vested  in  all  the  glory  of  typi- 
cally Venizelian  virtues,  and  vice  versa.     One  of 
Constantine's  American  apologists  raises  lack  of 
humour  to  the  nth  power  by  seriously  asserting  that 
Constantine — that  100  per  cent  Nordic  Teuton,  if 
there  ever  was  one — is  a  more  genuine  Greek  than 
Venizelos. 

There  is  perhaps  one  quality  that  both  hold  in 
common.  It  is  stubbornness.  Yet  the  very  agree- 
ment  spans  an  abyss  of  difference.  Constantine's 
will  is  like  a  Teutonic  knight  in  full  armour,  riding 
his  chain-mailed  mount  to  charge.  That  of  Veni- 
zelos is  visualized  by  a  Japanese  wrestler.    Or  else, 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS      89 

to  change  the  figure, — which  is  the  more  stubborn 
— a  block  of  concrete  or  a  girder  of  steel  ? 

II 

There  is  significance  in  the  fact  that  each  man 
lacks  the  most  striking  quality  of  the  other.  The 
most  obvious,  also  the  most  effective  attribute  of 
Venizelos  is  his  intellectual  superiority:  of  Con- 
stantine,  his  personal  magnetism. 

The  greatest  tribute  to  Venizelos's  intellectual 
power  was  rendered  by  Constantine  himself. 
"When  he  is  with  me  I  confess  that  his  arguments 
are  so  convincing  that  I  quickly  begin  to  imagine 
that  they  are  my  own,"  he  said  once.  On  the  other 
hand,  no  one  who  ever  came  into  contact  with  Con- 
stantine, not  even  the  wildest  American  cor- 
respondent bursting  with  the  ambition  to  tell  him 
what  an  unspeakable  traitor  he  was,  could  remain 
unaffected  by  the  charm  emanating  from  that 
kingly  personage.  A  Venizelist  lady  who  wrote  a 
rather  vituperative  book  about  him  said  that  no 
woman  could  possibly  resist  the  smile  of  his  blue 
eyes.  It  would  seem  that  the  only  mortal,  male  or 
female,  who  did  not  melt  away  in  Constantine's 
radiance  is  M.  Venizelos  himself. 

Certainly  the  saying,  "Every  inch  a  king,"  has 
never  applied  more  strikingly  to  a  ruler — and  that 
means  a  good  deal,  for  Constantine  measures  six 
feet  six  inches.  The  highest  compliment  to  his 
splendid  physique  was  probably  paid  by  the  Ameri- 
can visitor  who,  issuing  from  an  audience  with  him. 


90  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

burst  into  a  sigh:  "What  a  wonderful  guard  for  the 
Harvard  eleven  was  wasted  to  make  a  king!" 
Another  admirer  from  the  States  declares  that  Con- 
stantine  is  the  "personification  of  majesty." 

On  occasions  of  state,  in  full  dress  uniform,  with 
blue  and  white  plumes  on  his  head  and  his  marshal's 
baton  (he  has  two:  a  Greek  one,  and  also  a  Prus- 
sian) in  hand — verily,  no  finer  specimen  of  the 
Blond  Beast  can  be  imagined.  Much  of  his  charm 
is  explained  by  the  contrast  between  his  majestic 
appearance  and  the  amiable  directness  of  his  man- 
ner. How  could  an  American  resist  when  this 
Scandinavian  war  god  in  blue  and  silver  offers  him 
a  cigarette  and  lights  it  to  boot? 

We  are  told  that  he  talks  much  and  well,  rather 
vivaciously,  pounding  the  table  now  and  then,  or 
twirling  his  silky  moustache  with  his  fine  long  hand. 
He  affects  sangfroid,  but  at  the  same  he  "registers," 
like  an  actor  in  the  movies,  every  emotion  that 
crosses  his  system — he  is  an  actor  whose  favourite 
role  is  pretending  that  he  isn't  one. 

Perhaps  the  best  symbol  of  his  personality  is  that 
tchako  with  the  blue  and  white  plumes  about 
which  Mr.  Paxton  Hibben  is  so  enthusiastic.  M. 
Venizelos,  indoors,  always  wears  a  little  black  silk 
skull  cap — reminiscent  of  Mr.  Pickwick  and  an 
orthodox  Rabbi  from  Galicia.  He  and  Constantine 
could  no  more  exchange  their  respective  headgear 
than  their  heads. 

American  visitors  adore  Constantine.  So  do  his 
soldiers.    Some  one  has  said  that  the  King,  though 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS      91 

not  a  good  general,  is  a  good  soldier.  Why  not? 
Soldiering  is  his  one  passion,  his  vocation  and  avoca- 
tion. He  learnt  the  art  in  Prussia — a  fact  of  which 
both  he  and  his  enemies  made  much,  though  at  dif- 
ferent junctures, — at  the  Staff  College,  and  he  was 
an  officer  of  the  Imperial  Foot  Guards.  But  in  one 
thing  he  surpasses  his  Prussian  masters.  He  loves 
to  go  forth  among  his  soldiers  and  fraternize  with 
them,  and  he  knows  how  to  do  it.  He  has  an  ex- 
cellent memory,  and  knows  hundreds  of  his  soldiers 
by  their  first  names. 

In  the  Balkan  war  of  1912  he  distinguished  him- 
self by  taking  Salonica.  The  inside  story  of  that 
feat  is  intriguing.  For  one  reason  or  another  (to  be 
unearthed,  possibly,  some  day  in  the  archives  of 
Berlin  or  Vienna)  Constantine  was  not  anxious  to 
enter  Salonica,  and  did  so  only  under  heavy  pres- 
sure from  Venizelos,  who  telegraphed  to  King 
George  not  to  allow  the  Crown  Prince  to  divert  the 
army  into  the  direction  of  Monastir.  Constantine 
was  also  hailed  as  the  conqueror  of  lanina,  the 
Epirus  fortress.  Here,  again,  he  received  efficient 
help  from  General  Danglis,  assigned  to  the  task  by 
Venizelos. 

But  the  greatest  military  feat  that  attaches  to 
Constantine's  name,  apart  from  the  victory  over 
the  French  marines,  related  below,  is  connected  with 
the  baptism  of  his  youngest  child.  Constantine 
made  the  entire  army  and  navy  godfather.  This 
established  a  direct  family  tie,  considered  very 
strong  in  Greece,  between  him  and  every  soldier  and 


92  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

sailor,  the  mutual  appellation  between  father  and 
godfather  being  "houmharos"  equivalent  of  the 
French  compere.  Never  was  an  act  of  courtesy 
better  rewarded.  The  soldiers  and  sailors  went 
hj'sterical  with  delight.  After  reviews  Constantine 
is  wont  to  mingle  with  the  soldiers ;  he  shakes  hands 
with  them,  and  calls  them  by  their  first  name,  and 
they  address  him,  not  as  "Your  Majesty,"  but  as 
"houviharos."  Sometimes  democracy,  like  honesty, 
is  good  business. 

Constantine  always,  or  at  least  of  late  years, 
understood  better  than  Venizelos  how  to  be  on  good 
terms  with  a  crowd.  Venizelos  could  impress  a 
crowd — he  could  convince  a  crowd — he  could  even 
whip  a  crowd  into  a  fit  of  enthusiasm — but  Con- 
stantine knew  better  how  to  play  on  their  affection 
in  the  long  run.  With  all  his  six  feet  and  a  half,  his 
Teutonic  cast  and  his  gorgeous  trappings  he  was 
more  like  a  member  of  a  Greek  crowd — of  any 
crowd — than  the  homely  but  distant  Venizelos. 
After  all,  the  advocate  who  asserted  that  Con- 
stantine was  a  more  typical  Greek  than  Venizelos, 
was  right  in  the  sense:  Constantine  was  a  more 
typical  772  G 72  than  Venizelos,  who  would  be  set  apart 
in  any  mass  of  men  by  the  cold  intellectual  glow  of 
his  genius. 

Constantine  not  only  speaks  Greek  perfectly,  but 
he  speaks  the  famihar  idiom  of  Athenians,  whilst 
Venizelos  prefers  a  puristic,  classicized  speech. 
More  is  revealed  by  this  one  detail  than  by  half  a 
ton  of  propagandist  literature. 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS      93 

There  is  a  story  how  Venizelos,  after  his  arrival  in 
Greece  in  1910,  made  a  speech  from  the  balcony  of 
his  hotel  to  a  crowd  assembled  below.  The  issue  that 
agitated  the  public  mind  at  the  time  was:  should 
the  National  Assembly,  elections  for  which  were 
pending,  be  a  Constituante,  or  should  it  merely  re- 
vise the  existing  constitution?  The  difference  was 
vital.  A  constituent  assembly  would  have  mooted 
the  question  of  the  dynasty,  of  the  form  of  govern- 
ment. A  revisionist  assembly  would  occupy  itself 
with  reforms  of  detail,  not  touching  on  the  form 
of  government  at  all.  The  hotheads  of  the  Military 
League  clamoured  for  a  Constituante.  The  King 
and  the  court  party  sat  up  nights  praying  to  the 
Almighty  for  a  revisionist  assembly.  Venizelos 
(one  of  whose  chief  principles  was  ever  not  to  allow 
trees  to  grow  to  the  sky)  sided  with  the  King. 

In  the  course  of  his  speech  from  the  balcony  of 
the  Grand  Hotel  Venizelos  remarked,  en  passant: 
"The  Assembly,  of  course,  will  be  a  revisionist 
body."  From  every  direction  shouts  came:  "We 
want  a  Constituante."  Venizelos,  without  raising 
his  voice,  repeated  with  slow  emphasis:  "I  say,  the 
Assembly  will  be  a  revisionist  body."  Reinforced 
shouting  from  the  crowd:  "Down  with  revisionism! 
We  want  a  Constituante!"  The  politicians  on  the 
balcony  watched  Venizelos  intently.  In  a  sense  that 
moment  marked  the  parting  of  roads.  Had  the 
Cretan  given  in  to  the  crowd  there's  no  telling 
where  the  affair  might  have  ended.  It  might  have 
ended  in  revolution,  in  a  republic,  anything.    The 


94  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

popular  mood  was  ripe.  Without  visible  emotion 
Venizelos  repeated  for  a  third  time:  "The  Assembly 
will  be  revisionist."  The  crowd  was  nonplussed. 
Never  had  Athenians  been  treated  like  this.  There 
was  an  ominous  hush — then  wild  cheering  for  Veni- 
zelos.   He  won. 

The  incident,  like  the  matter  of  the  idiom,  reveals 
much.  It  gives  a  flashlight  photo  of  the  man  of 
Akrotiri  and  Therisso  who  in  the  very  act  of  waging 
war  on  four  Great  Powers  of  Europe — a  Quixotic 
act,  to  say  the  least — impressed  the  representatives 
of  those  Powers  with  his  sound  respectability,  with 
his  quiet,  almost  bourgeois,  manner.  Here  was  the 
rebel  leader,  who  had  risen  to  leadership  because  he 
could  shoot  as  well  as  talk  straight,  turned  conserva- 
tive— not  in  betrayal  of  his  original  purpose,  but 
in  strict  adherence  to  it.  He  had  changed  his 
method,  not  his  end.  And  that  scene  on  the  balcony, 
by  disclosing  a  very  important  aspect  of  Venizelos's 
character,  lifts  for  a  second  the  curtain  off  his 
future.  That  was  not  the  manner  of  a  Greek 
speaker  to  treat  a  Greek  crowd.  The  average  Greek 
politician  would  have  yielded  to  the  crowd — or  he 
would  have  argued  with  it,  or  harangued,  or  cajoled, 
or  threatened  it.  He  would  not  have  ignored  it.  It 
might  have  been  less  effective — but  it  would  have 
been  more  Greek.  Detachment  is  not  a  quality  that 
a  Greek  crowd  expects  from  its  leaders.  A  de- 
tached Greek  is  almost  a  contradiction  in  terms — 
like  a  spendthrift  Dutcliman. 

Now  detachment,  if  it  be  a  virtue  at  all,  is  es- 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS      95 

sentially  a  lonely,  an  un-social  virtue — the  very 
word  implies  loneliness.  His  detachment  would 
have  set  Venizelos  apart  as  a  solitary  man  even 
among  an  unsocial  people  like  Englishmen  or  Nor- 
wegians. But  the  Greeks  are  not  an  unsocial 
people — they  are  social  with  a  vengeance.  They 
could,  and  did,  admire  a  man  like  Venizelos — they 
could  follow  him,  even  love  him — but  they  could 
hardly  regard  him  as  one  of  their  own  number.  And 
Venizelos  was  not  an  Athenian — not  even  a  Greek 
in  the  strictest  sense ;  he  was  a  Cretan. 

In  1910,  when  Venizelos  was  first  elected  to  the 
Greek  chamber,  the  Turkish  government  protested 
violently  his  admission  on  the  ground  that  he  was 
an  Ottoman  subject,  and  when  he  was  seated  never- 
theless he  was,  in  contumaciam,  sentenced  to  death 
by  an  Ottoman  court  for  high  treason.  The  incident 
nearly  led  to  a  declaration  of  war.  And  if  the  Turks 
could  never  forget  that  Venizelos  was  born  under 
the  Ottoman  flag,  there  were  not  a  few  Athenians 
who  could  not  forget  it  either,  and  they  took  care  to 
remind  the  rest.  Venizelos  was  forty-six  years  old 
when  he  landed  in  Greece.  That  detail  must  not 
be  lost  out  of  sight. 

Ill 

As  a  speechmaker.  King  Constantine  was  less 
restrained  than  his  Prime  Minister.  He  was  an 
emotionalist,  apt  to  run  away  with  his  feelings — 
sometimes  even  with  those  of  his  audience.  There 
was  the  little  matter  of  his  speech  at  Potsdam,  in 


96  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

1913,  when  he  received  the  baton  of  a  Prussian 
field  marshal  from  his  imperial  brother-in-law.  The 
honour,  and  the  recollection  of  the  grand  old  days 
when  he  had  been  attached  to  the  Prussian  Staff 
College  and  the  2nd  Prussian  Foot  Guards,  made 
him  eloquent. 

I  am  proud  of  being  a  Prussian  officer  [he  said] .  We  Greeks 
owe  the  magnificent  victories  of  our  army  to  the  principles  of 
warfare  which  I  and  my  ofiicers  acquired  through  intercourse 
with  the  Prussian  General  Staff.  To  the  General  Staff  I 
owe  the  knowledge  that  brought  me  such  brilliant  successes 
in  the  war. 

Now  this  was  both  an  exaggeration  of  his  own 
part  in  the  war  with  Turkey,  and  a  grave  act  of 
discourtesy.  Constantine  may  or  may  not  have 
owed  his  knowledge  to  the  Prussian  Staff  College. 
But  with  the  brilliant  successes  of  the  Greek  arms 
the  French  military  mission,  called  to  Greece  by 
Venizelos  to  reorganize  the  army,  also  had  some- 
thing to  do.  To  this  Constantine  made  no 
reference. 

Within  twenty-four  hours  pandemonium  was 
loose  in  the  Paris  press.  Venizelos  (who  may  or 
may  not  have  owed  his  knowledge  of  how  to  treat 
the  indiscretions  of  a  sovereign  to  intercourse  with 
Prussian  chancellors)  promptly  telegraphed  that 
the  King  was  not  accompanied  by  a  responsible 
minister,  and  that  the  foreign  policy  of  the  Greek 
government  remained  unchanged.  The  pandemo- 
nium subsided. 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS      97 

But  Constantine  was  scheduled  to  visit  Paris 
next.  A  festive  reception,  after  what  had  happened, 
was  out  of  the  question.  To  drop  the  visit  altogether 
would  have  created  an  international  scandal  worse 
than  the  speech  itself.  The  old  diplomatic  expedient 
of  incognito  travel  was  chosen.  Now,  an  incognito 
visit  by  a  sovereign  does  not  mean  that  the  city  thus 
visited  must  not  know  of  his  presence.  It  means 
only  that  the  city  should  pretend  not  to  know  of  his 
presence.  In  this  particular  case  Paris  refused  to 
pretend.  A  crowd  assembled  in  front  of  the  ter- 
minus. Its  attitude  was  so  threatening  that  Con- 
stantine was  hurried  to  the  street  through  a  side 
exit.  Some  one  recognized  him — it  would  be  about 
as  easy  to  conceal  a  polar  bear  on  a  Paris  street, 
on  any  street,  as  the  six  feet,  six  inches  of  Teutonic 
masculinity  that  is  the  King  of  the  Hellenes.  A 
throng  gathered,  and  Constantine  was  hooted.  He 
was  rushed  to  his  hotel — a  throng  awaited  him  at 
the  entrance.  He  had  to  sneak  in  through  a  back 
door. 

It  is  in  small  events  like  this  that  the  inexorable 
consistency  of  Fate  manifests  itself  most  vividly. 
Constantine  could  never  forget  that  side  exit  of  the 
Paris  terminus,  that  back  door  of  the  Paris  hotel. 
He  had  never  been  fond  of  the  French.  From  this 
moment  he  hated  them  with  the  unforgiving  ob- 
stinacy so  characteristic  of  his  unimaginative  mind. 

Though  an  excellent  linguist  otherwise,  Constan- 
tine's  French  is  not  flawless.  For  some  unex- 
plained reason  he  learned  to  speak  French  late  in 


98  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

life.  Now,  in  the  ordinary  routine  of  court  educa- 
tion, it  came  to  pass  that  a  French  tutor  was  em- 
ployed for  his  children.  Queen  Sophie — Kaiser 
Wilhem's  sister — was  furious.  She  detested  the 
French  all  her  life.  She  told  her  children  not  to 
attend  the  French  lessons. 

The  tutor  was  perplexed.  He  tried  to  expostu- 
late with  the  Queen,  who  turned  her  back  on  him. 
The  tutor  appealed  to  the  King. 

"I  did  not  learn  how  to  speak  French  until  I  was 
thirty-seven,"  said  Constantine,  "and  then  I  needed 
it  but  a  few  weeks  in  Paris.  It  will  be  the  same  with 
my  children." 

That  was  the  end  of  the  French  lessons  of  King 
Constantine's  children.  However,  the  King  him- 
self received,  a  little  later,  a  French  lesson,  from 
one  Senator  Jonnart — and  he  isn't  likely  ever  to 
forget  it.    Of  which  more  anon. 


IV 


The  story  of  the  Constantine-Venizelos  duel  has 
been  told  and  retold  many  times.  A  bare  summary 
here  will  suffice. 

Practically  from  the  first  day  of  the  World  War 
Venizelos  advocated  Greek  intervention  on  the  side 
of  the  Entente.  He  pointed  out  to  the  King,  in 
conversations  and  in  memoranda,  that  Greece  was 
bound  by  her  defensive  alliance  with  Serbia  to  send 
troops  to  the  latter's  aid ;  that  apart  from  considera- 
tions of  honour,  to  assist  Serbia  was  vital  for  Greece, 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS       99 

for  a  crushed  Serbia  could  only  mean  an  enlarged 
Bulgaria  and  a  strengthened  Turkey ;  that  the  vic- 
tory of  the  Central  Powers  would  re-estabhsh  Turk- 
ish hegemony  in  the  Balkans,  and  that  a  Turkey 
thus  bolstered  up  first  would  crush  its  own  Greek 
subjects  and  then  attack  Greece;  that  Greece,  with 
her  disproportionately  long  coast  line,  her  wide- 
flung  island  possessions  and  her  dependence  on  sea- 
borne trade,  was  at  the  mercy  of  British  naval 
power. 

He  also  argued  that  it  was  important  for  Greece 
to  get  in  ahead  of  Italy — he  had  little  doubt  that 
Italy  would  ultimately  side  with  the  Allies — be- 
cause only  in  that  manner  could  Greece  obtain 
British  and  French  sanction  for  her  claims  in 
Northern  Epirus  and  the  Dodecanese,  claims  that 
were  in  violent  conflict  with  Italian  aspirations. 

On  the  other  hand,  he  declared,  by  joining  the 
Allies  Greece  would  gain  an  opportunity,  unlikely 
ever  to  recur,  to  settle  accounts  with  Turkey  for 
good;  to  unite  under  her  sovereignty  all  the  unre- 
deemed sections  of  the  Hellenic  race — those  of  the 
coast  of  Asia  Minor,  of  Thrace  and  of  the  islands, 
perhaps  even  Cyprus;  to  safeguard  herself  per- 
manently against  the  danger  of  Bulgarian  en- 
croacliments ;  to  secure,  finally,  the  friendship  and 
assistance  of  England  and  France,  the  powers  that, 
owing  to  their  obvious  mastery  of  the  seas,  would 
probably  win  the  war. 

King  Constantine,  on  his  side,  was  determined 
from  the  outset  to  remain  neutral.    In  various  com- 


100  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

munications  addressed  to  the  Kaiser,  his  brother-in- 
law,  to  Greek  diplomatists  abroad,  to  the  Bulgarian 
government,  and  in  his  many  and  bitter  discussions 
with  Venizelos  himself,  he  declared  categorically 
that  Greece  would  not  fight.  That  his  resolution 
was  essentially  sentimental,  that  it  was  predeter- 
mined by  his  sympathy  for  Germany,  or  rather  the 
Imperial  house,  and  by  the  loyalty  of  an  alumnus 
to  his  alma  mater,  the  Prussian  Staff  College,  is 
established  beyond  doubt.  There  was  a  time  when 
he  boasted  of  this  sympathy  and  this  loyalty,  even 
though  later  on  he  found  it  diplomatic  to  deny  it. 
For  a  while  he  could  rationalize  his  emotion  by 
pointing  to  the  military  preponderance  of  the 
Central  Powers  in  the  Balkans;  but  the  wish  was 
father  to  the  argument. 

The  first  definite  issue  occurred  in  January,  1915. 
King  Carol  of  Roumania,  friend  of  Germany  and 
Austria,  had  just  died;  there  were  hopes  at  Paris 
and  London  that  Roumania  would  "get  in  line." 
Sir  Edward  Grey  addressed  Venizelos.  If  Greece, 
he  said  in  effect,  would  join  the  Allies,  she  would 
obtain  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor  as  compensation. 
Venizelos  was  delighted. 

Preparations  for  the  Gallipoli  expedition,  sug- 
gested by  Mr.  Winston  Churchill  in  September, 
were  in  progress  at  London.  No  one  realized  more 
keenly  than  M.  Venizelos  the  tremendous  import  of 
the  undertaking.  He  asked  for  the  mobilization  of 
an  army  corps,  to  be  dispatched  presently  to  Gal- 
lipoli.    It  was  denied.     He  asked  for  a  single 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     101 

dhision.  Constantine's  Prussian-ridden  General 
Staff  refused,  and  Venizelos  was  dismissed  by  the 
King. 

The  consequences  of  missing  this  opportunity 
were  later  summarized  by  M.  Venizelos  himself. 

Five  days  after  the  decree  of  mobilization  [he  said]  the 
army  corps  which  I  asked  for  would  have  been  mobilized.  In 
another  nine  days,  with  the  abundance  of  material  which  we 
and  our  Allies  had  at  our  disposal,  we  should  have  found  our- 
selves with  our  army  corps,  or  with  our  one  division,  in  occu- 
pation of  the  Gallipoli  peninsula,  which  was  unguarded,  un- 
garrisoned  and  unfortified.  .  .  .  Within  ten  or  fifteen  days, 
a  part  of  our  Gallipoli  forces,  especially  if  we  had  had  an 
army  corps,  would  have  advanced  to  Constantinople  and  found 
it  abandoned  by  the  Turks. 

This  was  not  the  vision  of  a  dreamer.  By  the 
end  of  February,  wrote  the  American  Ambassador, 
Mr.  Morgenthau,  every  measure  was  taken  by  the 
Turkish  government  and  by  the  German  and  Aus- 
tro-Hungarian  Ambassadors  to  leave  Constanti- 
nople to  its  fate.  Trains  to  rush  the  high  dignitaries, 
the  archives  and  the  gold  in  the  Turkish  and 
German  banks  to  safety  were  kept  in  readiness. 

But  the  opportunity,  perhaps  the  greatest  the 
Allies  had  in  the  whole  war,  was  missed.  The  con- 
tinued neutrality  of  Greece  enabled  the  German 
General  Staff  to  fortify  and  garrison  the  Straits. 
By  the  time  the  British  forces  effected  their  landing 
everything  was  ready  for  their  reception.  The  en- 
terprise ended,  despite  the  unprecedented  heroism 
of  the  British,  in  a  bloody  debacle.    Constantinople 


102  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

was  not  taken — and  the  war  was  prolonged  by  three 
years. 

His  refusal  to  assist  the  Allies  in  the  Dardanelles 
venture  estabhshed  Constantine's  standing  in  the 
Valhalla  of  German  heroes.  Temporarily,  that  is. 
One  wonders,  in  this  year  of  the  Lord  nineteen 
hundred  and  twenty-two,  if  there  are  many 
Germans  whose  gratitude  to  the  sovereign  of  the 
Hellenes  has  remained  unshaken.  For  three  thou- 
sand years,  ever  since  the  days  of  the  wooden  horse 
contrived  by  a  Greek  King,  there  lingered  in  this 
world  a  suspicion  of  Danaic  gifts.  In  the  twentieth 
century  a  Greek  King's  contribution  to  the  German 
cause  were  the  war  years  1916,  1917,  1918. 


It  was  on  the  issue  of  Bulgaria's  attack  on  Serbia 
that  the  next  round  of  the  Venizelos-Constantine 
duel  was  fought. 

The  Gounaris  cabinet,  which  superseded  the 
Cretan  in  the  spring  of  1915,  restated  Greek  neu- 
trality in  the  best  manner  of  Constantinian  diplo- 
macy. Its  appointment  followed  by  a  flaring-up 
of  German  propaganda  at  Athens,  under  the  very 
able  direction  of  Baron  Schenk.  These  were  the 
days  when  some  of  the  biggest  war  fortunes  were 
made  in  Greece.  They  were  founded  on  the  expor- 
tation to  Germany  of  Greek  morale,  Greek  senti- 
ment, Greek  flattery — above  all,  of  Greek  vows  of 
neutrality.  Private  enterprise  in  these  lines  pros- 
pered under  encouragement  from  the  State.     On 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     103 

the  other  hand,  the  supply  of  fuel  and  other 
provisions  to  German  submarines  was  reserved  for 
a  State  monopoly,  operated  by  Constantine's  naval 
staff. 

Despite  the  wholesale  purchase  of  Greek  news- 
papers and  the  wholesale  bribery  of  Greek  poli- 
ticians by  Baron  Schenk,  despite  governmental 
terrorism  unprecedented  even  in  Greece,  the  elec- 
tions in  June,  1915,  returned  a  substantial  majority 
of  Venizelists.  In  August  Venizelos  was  asked  to 
form  a  new  cabinet.  But  previously  Constantine 
secretly  gave  assurances  to  Germany  that  Greece 
would  not  abandon  neutrality  even  though  Bulgaria 
attacked  Serbia. 

On  September  24  Venizelos  learned  that  general 
mobilization  had  been  ordered  by  the  Bulgarian 
government.  He  immediately  demanded  that 
Greece  should  join  Serbia  under  the  defensive  alli- 
ance concluded  in  1913.  For  a  few  days  Constan- 
tine equivocated.  He  harped  upon  the  military 
superiority  of  the  Germans  and  on  the  dangers  of 
intervention,  but  he  dared  not  to  refuse  point  blank. 
At  last  Venizelos  confronted  him  with  the  choice. 
He  said  that  he  had  the  majority  of  the  Greek 
people  with  him,  and  that  by  thwarting  his  policy 
Constantine  virtually  set  the  Constitution  aside. 

At  last  Constantine  showed  his  hand.  "I  am 
responsible  to  God  alone,"  he  said.  Venizelos  ob- 
tained a  vote  of  confidence  in  the  Chamber.  Next 
day  he  was  dismissed. 

One  of  the  gravest  charges  brought  against  Con- 


104  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

stantine  by  his  opponents  is  based  on  his  attitude 
toward  the  Serbian  treaty.  One  of  the  weakest 
points  of  his  defence  is  his  answer  to  the  charge. 
This  answer  is  defined  by  the  note  addressed  by 
Venizelos's  successor,  M.  Zaimis — the  ex-High 
Commissioner  of  Crete — to  Serbia.  The  gist  of  its 
many  words  is  that  the  treaty  of  1913  limited 
Greece's  obhgation  to  aid  her  ally  to  the  case  of  a 
Balkan  war  only. 

This  is  flatly  contradicted  by  Venizelos,  who  ne- 
gotiated the  treaty  himself.  He  says  that  it  was 
expressly  understood  at  the  time  that  the  casus 
foederis  was  not  limited  to  a  Balkan  war  in  the 
strict  sense. 

Another  argument,  not  contained  in  the  Zaimis 
note,  but  stated  manifoldly  by  Constantine  both 
previously  and  afterward,  was  that  Greek  military 
assistance  to  Serbia  was  contingent  on  the  latter 
country's  putting  150,000  men  in  the  field  to  co- 
operate with  her  ally.  On  every  occasion  Constan- 
tine carefully  refrained  from  mentioning  the  fact 
that  England  and  France  had  repeatedly  offered  to 
substitute  the  army  of  150,000,  as  Serbia  was  unable 
to  supply  it. 

But,  damning  though  the  evidence  be  on  these 
two  points,  the  verdict  of  history  upon  Constan- 
tine's  good  faith  in  the  matter  of  the  Serbian  alli- 
ance will  not  rest  on  them.  It  will  be  founded  on 
the  fact  that  two  days  before  Bulgaria  declared  war 
on  Serbia  Constantine  had  notified  the  Bulgarian 
government  that  Greece  would  not  fight. 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     105 

A  few  days  later  Venizelos  defeated  the  Zaimis 
government  on  a  vote  of  confidence.  Zaimis  re- 
signed. M.  Skouloudis  was  appointed  Premier. 
The  Chamber  was  dissolved,  a  writ  for  new  elections 
was  issued.  Venizelos  directed  his  followers  to  ab- 
stain from  voting,  in  protest  against  the  King's 
unconstitutional  procedure.  The  result  was  that  in 
the  stead  of  the  720,000  votes  registered  in  June  of 
the  preceding  year,  only  230,000  were  cast.  Need- 
less to  say,  the  government  won  a  splendid  victory. 

The  period  between  October,  1915  and  October, 
1916  marks  the  total  eclipse  of  Venizelos,  and  the 
zenith  of  Constantine.  It  is  the  period  of  rolling 
German  gold,  of  secret  service  a  la  Metternich,  of 
newspapers  bought  up  or  silenced  by  raids  and 
confiscation,  of  the  wholesale  prostitution  of  Greek 
public  life.  Constantine  became  one  of  the  most 
popular  men  in  Germany.  In  this  period  falls  his 
refusal  to  allow  the  Serbian  army  transit  through 
Greek  territory.  His  reasons  for  the  refusal  were 
set  forth  in  beautiful  diplomatic  prose,  but,  if  one 
can  believe  the  usually  trustworthy  Mr.  John  Mav- 
rogordato,  the  Allies  had  the  last  laugh  in  the  affair, 
for  the  whole  agitation  to  obtain  Constantine's  per- 
mit for  the  transit  on  land  was  a  screen  behind  which 
the  Serb  troops  were  safely  transported  by  sea. 

In  this  period  also  fall  the  invasion  of  Greek 
territory  by  Bulgars  and  Germans;  the  surrender 
of  the  important  Fort  Roupel  to  the  Germans  (a 
little  matter  which  cost  Greece  Northern  Epirus, 
promptly  claimed  by  Italy  as  a  punishment),  the 


106  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

capitulation  of  the  Hadjopulos  army  corps  of  8000 
at  Kavalla ;  wholesale  delivery  of  Greek  cannon  and 
supplies  to  the  Germans;  and  the  blockade  of 
Greece  by  the  Allies.  Although  it  was  plain  that 
under  no  circumstances  would  he  fight,  Constantine 
maintained  the  Greek  army  on  full  war  footing — 
and  full  war  footing  implied  wartime  allowances  to 
officers.  Queen  Sophie  took  over  the  management 
of  all  charitable  organizations  at  Athens.  She 
managed  them  with  German  thoroughness.  Thou- 
sands of  reservists,  drawn  to  the  capital  from  all 
parts  of  the  country,  were  sent  about  to  shopkeepers 
and  homes  to  solicit  contributions  for  the  united 
charities.  The  reservists  were  vigorous  young  men. 
Contributions  were  rarely  refused.  The  reservists 
were  fed  from  the  soup  kitchens  maintained  by  the 
charities.  They  also  received  a  generous  pocket- 
money.  Constantine  was  very  popular  in  Athens. 
So  was  Queen  Sophie. 


VI 


On  September  25,  1916,  Venizelos  left  Athens, 
late  at  night,  in  utter  secrecy.  He  boarded  a  small 
steamer  and  went  to  Crete — thence  to  Samos  and 
Mytilene  and  other  Greek  islands.  On  October  5, 
the  anniversary  of  his  dismissal  by  Constantine, 
Venizelos  established  the  Salonica  government.  On 
November  24  Venizelos  declared  war  on  Germany, 
Austria-Hungary  and  Turkey.  Once  more  he  was 
fighting  half  Europe.    It  was  a  homely,  cosy  feel- 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     107 

ing — a  memory  of  his  fading  youth  come  to  life 
again. 

This  time  Constantine's  answer  was  not  words, 
but  a  deed.  On  December  1  the  Royahst  troops  at 
Athens,  whipped  to  a  frenzied  loyalty  by  the 
speech-making  and  fraternizing  Princes,  ambushed 
two  thousand  English  and  French  marines  who  had 
landed  to  secure  the  surrender  of  arms  and  ammuni- 
tion, agreed  to  by  Constantine.  The  King  had 
assured  the  French  admiral  in  command  that  the 
Allied  troops  would  not  be  attacked,  and  the 
admiral  relied  on  the  royal  word.  The  result  was 
the  massacre  of  a  large  number  of  the  French  and 
Englishmen.  The  admiral  and  his  staff  themselves 
were  taken  prisoner,  but  were  released  afterward. 
It  was  the  greatest  victory  of  Constantine's  military 
career,  achieved  without  a  coach.  For  several 
days  anti-Venizelist  pogroms  raged.  Scores  were 
murdered,  hundreds  imprisoned,  thousands  of  stores 
and  homes  looted.  Constantine  was  more  popular 
than  ever  with  the  reservists. 

He  was  more  popular  than  ever  at  German 
General  Headquarters,  too.  On  January  26,  he 
telegraphed  to  the  Kaiser: 

We  send  you  from  the  depth  of  our  hearts  the  most  cordial 
wishes  on  the  occasion  of  your  birthday.  We  are  following 
with  admiration  the  great  events  on  land  and  sea.  We  pray 
that  God  grant  you  very  soon  a  glorious  victory  over  all  your 
infamous  enemies.  We  have  been  honoured  by  the  landing  of 
forty  Senegalese  soldiers  intended  to  guard  the  French  lega- 
tion.   What  a  charming  picture  of  civilization. 


108  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Another  charming  picture  of  civilization  was, 
three  days  later,  the  saluting  of  the  Allied  flags  by 
royalist  troops  in  the  Zappeion.  This  was  by  way 
of  expiation  for  the  little  mistake  of  December  1. 

The  tragicomedy  lasted  until  June.  On  the 
eleventh  of  that  month  the  French  High  Commis- 
sioner, Senator  Jonnart,  presented  an  ultimatimi 
demanding  the  abdication  of  Constantine,  on  the 
technical  ground  that  he  had  violated  the  constitu- 
tion guaranteed  by  Great  Britain,  France  and  Rus- 
sia. Constantine  had  his  French  lesson.  He  proved 
a  docile  student.  In  twenty-four  hours  he  was  on 
his  way  to  Switzerland.  His  son  Alexander  was 
proclaimed  King.  Two  weeks  later  Venizelos  was 
reinstalled  at  Athens.  Once  more  Greece  was 
united.  From  this  moment  the  Hellenic  Kingdom 
was  a  full-fledged  Ally.  For  the  next  three  years 
and  five  months  Venizelos  was  virtual  dictator.  We 
have  had  a  glimpse  of  him  at  the  Paris  conference. 
With  the  Treaty  of  Sevres,  which  gave  Greece  the 
last  of  the  Greek-inhabited  regions  of  what  was  once 
the  Ottoman  Empire,  he  reached  his  zenith.  There 
were  no  more  heights  to  be  scaled. 


VII 


In  November,  1920,  Venizelos  was  at  Nice  on  a 
well-earned  vacation.  It  was  exactly  ten  years  after 
his  memorable  landing  at  Piraeus.  In  the  mean- 
time he  had  elevated  Greece  from  a  small  poor 
country  of  the  darkest  Balkans  into  a  European 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     109 

power — restored  Hellenic  territories  beyond  the 
wildest  dreams  of  the  nationalists — won  three  wars 
— played  an  important  role  at  the  greatest  inter- 
national conference  ever  held.  His  career  was 
phenomenal — unheard-of — Napoleonic.  Professor 
Herbert  Adams  Gibbons  draws  the  chart  of  those 
ten  years  in  terms  of  graphic  contrast: 

In  1910  Kaiser  Wilhelm  could  ask  contemptuously,  Who 
is  this  man  Venizelos?  In  1920  Venizelos  had  a  leading  role 
in  deciding  the  destiny  of  the  Near  East,  while  the  Kaiser 
was  sawing  wood  in  a  Dutch  garden  with  a  sentry  watching 
him. 

A  naked  man  jumps  far,  says  a  Serbian  proverb. 
Ten  years  earlier  Venizelos  had  arrived  in  Greece, 
a  naked  man — unencumbered  by  family  ties,  parish 
considerations,  clique  loyalties,  party  fetters.  He 
jumped,  and  jumped  very  far  indeed. 

But  when  a  naked  man  falls  after  the  far  jump 
he  is  apt  to  fall  hard. 

In  October,  1920,  King  Alexander  died  from  a 
monkey-bite.  Venizelos  summoned  Prince  Paul, 
who  was  living  at  Lucerne,  to  the  throne.  Admiral 
Coundouriotis  assumed  the  regency.  On  Novem- 
ber 14  the  general  elections  took  place — the  first 
since  June,  1915.  Next  day  the  world  was  as- 
tounded by  the  news  that  Venizelos  was  defeated  by 
an  overwhelming  majority.  Most  of  the  Athens 
dispatches  added  that  the  Greek  people  decided  for 
the  return  of  Constantine. 

In  more  than  one  way  that  was  an  exaggeration. 


110  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

When  the  first  excitement  cooled  down  it  appeared, 
as  Mr.  Mavrogordato  points  out,  that  the  "over- 
whelming majority"  for  Constantine  was  sixty  per 
cent  of  the  total  as  against  forty  per  cent  of 
Venizelist  vote.  Moreover,  the  sober  truth  was  that 
the  sixty  per  cent  majority  was  not  so  much  for 
Constantine  as  against  Venizelos — an  important 
difference.  But  for  the  moment  subtleties  like  that 
were  drowned  in  the  exultation  of  the  Constan- 
tinists.  Mm.  Rallis  and  Gounaris,  with  their  excel- 
lent sense  of  political  coup  de  theatre,  flooded  the 
world  with  accounts  of  their  victory,  and  announced 
that  a  plebiscite  would  be  held  in  a  month  to  decide 
over  Constantine's  return. 

The  Venizelists  at  once  gauged  the  scope  of  this 
announcement.  They  knew  only  too  well  that  at 
that  particular  moment  of  anti- Venizelist  elation  it 
would  be  very  easy  for  the  Royalists  to  manipulate 
a  plebiscite  so  as  to  make  the  demand  for  Constan- 
tine appear  unanimous.  They  declared,  therefore, 
that  they  regarded  the  vote  of  November  14  as 
binding  and  final,  and  submitted  to  the  people's  will. 
But  the  Royalists  were  not  thus  to  be  deprived  from 
a  cheap  and  spectacular  triumph.  The  plebiscite 
was  held  in  due  course.  The  result  did  not  disap- 
point. Out  of  1,013,724  votes  cast  999,954  were  for 
Constantine.  The  Royalist  claim  that  the  vote  was 
practically  unanimous  was  correct — as  far  as  it 
went.  Minor  details  were  overlooked.  They  in- 
cluded military  supervision  of  the  voting;  an  in- 
geniously contrived  ballot,  which  did  not  show  any 


CONST ANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     111 

express  alternative  to  Constantine ;  and  the  circum- 
stance that  Royalists  were  permitted  to  vote  as 
many  times  as  they  liked. 

The  Greeks  are  a  notoriously  continent  race  as 
far  as  alcohol  is  concerned.  But  human  nature  will 
not  be  cheated,  not  even  in  Hellas.  Human  nature 
craves  intoxicants.  The  favorite  intoxicant  of 
Greeks  is  politics.  One  hardly  ever  sees  a  drunken 
man  in  the  streets  of  Athens.  But  the  cafes  are  al- 
ways crowded — with  wild-eyed,  gesticulating,  pas- 
sionate men  who  sip  Turkish  coffee  from  diminutive 
cups — and  gulp  down  politics  by  the  gallon.  The 
evening  of  the  day  when  Constantine  was  recalled 
by  a  majority  of  one  million  votes  will  be  remem- 
bered as  the  greatest  political  orgy  in  Hellenic  his- 
tory. In  Athens  strangers  wearing  the  royalist 
badge  embraced  and  kissed  one  another  in  the 
streets,  and  smashed  the  heads  of  such  candidates 
for  suicide  who  wore  no  badges.  White-haired 
Colonels  in  full  dress  uniform  emulated  St.  Simeon 
Stylites  on  top  of  lamp-posts,  shouting  ''Zito  Basil- 
eus"  until  they  fell,  exhausted,  off  their  perch. 

VIII 

Constantine  was  not  remiss  in  improving  on  the 
occasion.  He  did  not  wait  even  for  the  plebiscite — 
reasonably  enough — but  ordered  a  special  train  to 
take  him  from  his  Swiss  retreat  to  the  South  Italian 
port  of  embarkation.  And  he  took  pains,  now  that 
he  was  vindicated,  to  tell  the  world  at  large  that, 
though  abused  and  mortified  beyond  endurance,  he 


112  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

bore  no  grudge.  His  mouthpiece  was  Le  Matin  of 
Paris,  which  obhged  him  by  rushing  a  correspon- 
dent to  his  side. 

First  of  all,  Constantine  asserted,  it  was  a 
malicious  as  well  as  absurd  lie  that  he  had  been  pro- 
German.  Had  he  not  offered  aid  to  the  Allies  five 
times,  and  had  he  not  been  politely  refused?  As  to 
the  Serbian  treaty— why,  Serbia  was  obhged  to 
send  150,000  men  to  aid  Greece,  and  she  didn't  have 
them.  The  army  corps  of  8000  which  at  Kavalla 
had  surrendered  to  the  Germans  and  was  interned 
at  Goerlitz — why,  they  were  isolated,  completely 
cut  off.  He — Constantine — ordered  them,  through 
Sir  Francis  Elliot,  the  British  minister,  to  await 
the  ships  that  were  sent  to  fetch  them  home,  but 
this  order  somehow  never  reached  them.  What 
could  they  do  but  surrender,  as  the  alternative 
would  have  been  to  rebel  against  their  anointed 
King?  Nor  was  Fort  Roupel  surrendered  to  the 
Bulgars  by  choice.  It  was  completely  isolated,  and 
the  only  order  sent  from  Athens  was  not  to  open 
hostilities  with  the  Central  Powers. 

The  story  about  the  Massacre  of  the  First  of  De- 
cember had  been  distorted.  For  one  thing,  there 
were  only  800  royalist  troops  in  Athens,  against 
2000  Allied  marines.  Nobody  gave  orders  to  fire 
on  the  French — some  one,  perhaps  a  Frenchman, 
fired  a  shot — the  garrison  became  excited — there 
were  casualties — it  was  regrettable.  Besides,  the 
Allies  had  promised,  through  M.  Benazet,  certain 
concessions  in  exchange  for  the  surrender  of  arms. 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS      113 

These  promises  were  never  ratified,  still  less  kept. 
The  Alhed  demand  thus  was  illegal. 

Not  a  very  con\'incing  defence,  on  its  face.  Mr. 
Mavrogordato,  ablest  of  the  Venizelist  spokesmen 
in  England,  points  out  that  the  King's  best  reply 
to  the  accusation  that  he  had  been  pro-German  was 
not  denial,  nor  protestation  of  his  pro- Ally  senti- 
ments, but  simply  the  question :  why  shouldn't  he  be 
pro-German?  In  1914,  the  treaty  with  Serbia  not- 
withstanding, there  was  no  moral,  even  less  a  legal, 
obligation  for  a  Greek  to  be  pro- Ally.  The  only 
obligation  of  a  Greek  was  to  be  pro-Greek.  If  the 
interests  of  Greece  demanded  neutrality,  or  even 
siding  with  Germany,  it  was  not  only  the  right  but 
the  duty  of  the  King  of  Greece  to  remain  neutral, 
or  to  side  with  Germany.  The  issue,  at  least,  was 
debatable.  But  Constantine  ran  true  to  form.  It 
seemed  safer — it  certainly  was  easier — to  prevari- 
cate than  to  argue. 

One  point  of  his  pleading  should  be  noted.  He 
asserted  that  on  December  1,  1916,  eight  hundred 
Greek  soldiers  had  been  drawn,  unwilling,  into  the 
skirmish  with  the  French.  It  is  established  as  a 
fact  that  the  Greek  troops  outnumbered  mani- 
foldly the  Allied  marines;  and  there  are  witnesses 
who  have  heard  the  Princes'  harangues  against  the 
"treacherous  Entente,"  repeated  day  in,  day  out, 
in  the  barracks  and  cantonments  of  the  royahst 
regiments. 

A  rising  star  never  lacks  enthusiastic  astrologers 
to  proclaim  its  glory.    Constantine  always  had  his 


114  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

partisans  in  the  West ;  now  that  he  was  rehabihtated 
by  his  people  a  whole  host  sprang  forward  to  paint 
the  lily  white.  Most  interesting  among  the  argu- 
ments produced  at  this  juncture  was  the  assertion 
of  the  British  Admiral  Sir  JNIark  Kerr,  who  had 
been  head  of  the  naval  mission  to  Greece,  that 
Greece  was  not  obliged  in  1915  to  go  to  Serbia's 
aid,  because  Serbia  herself  had  broken  her  engage- 
ment when  in  June,  1913,  she  refused  to  back  up 
Greece  in  her  conflict  with  Turkey.  Mr.  Mavro- 
gordato  finds  two  faults  with  this  defence.  Firstly, 
he  says,  it  was  not  thought  of  in  1915 — the  Zaimis 
note,  which  repudiated  Greece's  obligation,  made 
no  mention  of  it.  In  fact,  it  emerged  for  the  first 
time  in  1917,  in  a  pamphlet  by  Mr.  G.  F.  Abbott, 
entitled  "The  Truth  about  Greece."  But  being 
manufactured  CcV  post  facto  was  the  lesser  flaw  in 
Sir  Mark  Kerr's  claim.  Worse  it  was  that  it  wasn't 
true.  For  not  only  did  Serbia  in  June,  1913,  stand 
loyally  by  Greece,  but  M.  Streit,  the  Greek  Foreign 
Minister,  himself  conveyed  the  Greek  government's 
gratitude  to  Belgrade.* 

IX 

Venizelos  received  the  news  of  his  defeat  calmly. 
"I  hope  that  the  Allies  will  not  punish  Greece  be- 
cause of  Constantine,"  he  said. 

Was  his  detachment  a  pose?  That  question  will 
have  to  be  settled  between  M.  Venizelos  and  God. 

•  M.  Streit,  with  General  Dousmanis  and  Colonel  Metaxas,  formed 
the  so-called  "invisible  government"  at  Athens  in  1916. 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     115 

Never  since  has  he  said  or  done  anything  to  justify 
doubt  as  to  his  sincerity  in  the  moment  of  his 
downfall. 

His  views  concerning  the  causes  of  the  debacle 
were  characteristically  clear.  "Suppose,"  he  said  to 
an  English  visitor,  "your  army  had  been  mobilized, 
not  in  1914,  but  in  1912 — and  had  remained  under 
colours  until  1920.  Suppose  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
had  then  appealed  to  the  country.  He  would  have 
been  defeated.  The  soldiers  who  had  been  away 
from  their  homes  for  eight  years — all  their  friends 
and  relatives — would  have  voted  against  any 
government." 

Venizelos,  as  he  was  himself  only  too  willing  to 
admit,  was  in  the  eyes  of  the  Greek  people  identi- 
fied with  war.  He  had  led  them  through  three  wars 
—1912,  1913  and  1916—18.  For  the  Greek  popu- 
lar mind  the  three  wars  merged  into  one.  For 
Greece,  as  for  Serbia,  the  World  War  began  in 
1912. 

Then  there  were  his  mistakes — undeniable  and 
undenied.  "He  was,"  says  Mr.  Mavrogordato, 
"singularly  unhappy  in  his  choice  of  subordinates, 
many  of  whom  were  competent  only  in  the  perse- 
cution of  their  political  and  private  enemies."  To 
be  sure,  he  had  to  work  with  the  material  he  found 
m  the  spot.  He  did  not  introduce  corruption,  nepo- 
tism and  petty  oppression  into  the  Greek  govern- 
ment; but  he  did  not  exert  himself  sufficiently  to 
eradicate  those  evils.  With  all  his  mastery  of 
statecraft,  and  his  skill  in  reorganizing  the  army 


116  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

and  navy  notwithstanding,  Venizelos  was  not  a 
good  administrator.  Rather,  he  was  not  an  admini- 
strator at  all.  He  thought,  writes  an  American  de- 
fender of  Constantine,  "that  as  long  as  he  devoted 
himself  to  the  service  of  the  Hellenic  national  inter- 
ests beyond  the  frontiers  of  the  realm,  all  questions 
of  internal  character  would  have  only  a  secondary 
importance."  He  committed,  in  an  aggravated 
form,  the  mistake  of  President  Wilson  in  going  to 
Paris.  His  prolonged  stay  abroad  was  more  inevi- 
table than  Mr.  Wilson's;  it  was  also  more  pro- 
longed. His  absence  lasted,  not  a  few  months,  but 
three  years. 

The  most  tragic  trespass  of  his  government  was 
one  for  which  he  was  not  responsible  at  all.  It  was 
the  outburst  of  terrorism  with  which  his  supporters 
avenged  the  unsuccessful  attempt  on  Venizelos's 
life  by  a  Constantinist  fanatic  at  Paris.  The  po- 
groms enacted  by  Constantine's  reservists  in  De- 
cember, 1916,  were  now  duplicated  by  the  opposing 
camp.  Among  the  victims  of  these  lamentable 
excesses  was  M.  Ion  Dragoumis,  son  of  the  former 
Premier  and  most  brilliant  and  substantial  literary 
figure  of  Young  Greece.  According  to  the  official 
version,  he  was  stabbed  to  death  by  a  soldier  "while 
resisting  arrest."  His  death,  says  Mr.  Mavrogor- 
dato,  inflicted  an  irreparable  loss  on  Hellenic  life. 

X 

Analogy  between  Venizelos  and  Mr.  Wilson  is 
not  limited  to  the  external  and  accidental  connec- 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS      117 

tion  between  their  absence  from  home  and  their  de- 
feat at  the  polls.  With  all  the  enormous  differences 
of  mentality  and  temperament  the  two  had  one 
quality  in  common — aloofness.  In  M.  Venizelos 
the  trait  is  not  so  all-pervading  as  in  the  American 
President — it  is  also  much  less  obvious,  for  Veni- 
zelos's  manner  is  suavity  itself,  and  he  is  past  master 
of  an  art  of  which  Wilson  was  utterly  devoid — that 
of  ingratiating  himself  with  strangers,  and  with 
journalists.  He  is  also  capable  of  securing  the 
allegiance  and  co-operation  of  gifted  men — a 
capacity  not  shared  by  the  fancier  of  rubber  stamps. 
But  Venizelos  was  hardly  more  than  Wilson  the 
man  to  inspire  lasting  personal  affection  on  a  large 
scale.  He  had  no  magnetism — none,  at  least,  of 
the  brand  that  works  upon  the  masses.  He  himself 
recognized  Constantine's  superiority  in  this  respect. 

This  aloofness,  defect  of  a  preponderant  intellec- 
tuality, was  capitalized  by  his  enemies.  Their 
strongest  weapon  was  branding  Venizelos  a  for- 
eigner. His  origin  told  against  him.  With  the 
"first  families,"  with  the  political  clique  of  Athens, 
antipathy  and  envy  took  the  form  of  snobbishness 
abusing  the  parvenu,  the  homo  novus,  the  Cretan 
comitadji.  "He  is  a  nobody — he  is  not  of  the 
great  family  of  Venizelos"  said  M.  Rallis  to  Mrs. 
Kenneth-Brown.  "So  much  the  worse  for  the 
great  family  of  Venizelos"  came  the  appropriate 
answer. 

As  regards  the  common  people,  the  cry  of 
"foreigner"  proved  most  effective.    When  in  1915 


118  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Venizelos  was  considering  to  placate  Bulgaria  by 
ceding  the  Drama-Kavalla  region  (a  loss  amply 
compensated  for  by  the  British  promise  of  the 
coast  of  Asia  Minor)  the  politicians  of  Athens  said 
to  the  crowd:  "Look  at  this  foreigner — he  wants  to 
sell  out  Greek  land  and  Greek  souls  to  the  Bulgars." 
His  main  support  came  from  New,  rather  than 
from  Old,  Greece — from  the  redeemed  provinces, 
Macedonia,  Thrace,  Crete,  the  islands,  not  from  the 
original  kingdom. 


XI 


But  he  was  not  only  a  Cretan — he  was  altogether 
un-Greek.  He  introduced  and  championed  an  en- 
tirely new  element  in  Greek  life.  This  Cretan 
mountaineer  was  the  apostle  of  Western  civiliza- 
tion. Greece,  shut  off  by  history  and  geography 
from  the  main  currents  of  European  life,  remained 
a  world  unto  itself  even  after  the  liberation,  even 
after  the  importation  of  a  Western  varnish  with 
the  Bavarian  and  Danish  dynasties  and  the  develop- 
ment of  trade  with  the  West.  Greek  ideology 
showed  all  the  terrible  effects  of  inbreeding  and 
inward  growth,  of  the  lack  of  constant  comparison, 
of  the  absence  of  tests. 

Some  small  nations  have  an  international,  cosmo- 
politan touch  about  them  that  is  denied  to  the  great 
ones.  Conscious  of  their  material  smallness,  they 
seek  to  broaden  their  spiritual  outlook.  In  a  sense 
Danes  and  Swiss  and  Roumanians  are  better  Euro- 


CONST ANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     1 19 

peans  than  Englishmen  or  Frenchmen,  who  live  in 
self-sufficient  national  universes.  In  this  respect 
Greece  carried  the  murderous  handicap  of  her  own 
glorious  past.  Wasn't  Hellas  the  fountainhead  of 
European  civilization?  Europe  owed  a  debt  to 
Greece  and  Greeks  were  too  content  to  live  on  the 
hope  that  the  interest  would  be  paid  some  time. 
Greece — one  must  remember  the  Greeks  call  their 
country  Hellas,  and  themselves  Romeoi,  Romans — 
was  the  centre  of  the  universe.  She  was  perfect. 
If  the  rest  of  Europe  refused  to  shape  their  culture, 
their  pohtics,  their  whole  life  on  Greek  hues — why, 
so  much  the  worse  for  the  rest  of  Europe. 

Venizelos,  inveterate  revolutionist,  declared  war 
on  this  deadly  provincialism.  He  represented  the 
West.  He  told  Greeks  that  theirs  was  a  small  and 
poor  and  backward  country,  that  their  megalo- 
mania was  absurd,  and  if  they  wanted  to  survive  at 
all  they  had  to  learn  everything  from  bottom  up,  to 
reform  their  political  and  economic  life,  their  educa- 
tion, their  manners,  their  whole  mentality,  on  Euro- 
pean models.  He  could  not  open  his  mouth  without 
reminding  the  Greeks  of  their  worst  faults,  without 
exposing  their  Hellenocentric  phantasmagories  to 
ridicule.  France  and  especially  England  always 
haunted  his  words. 

To  the  multitude  nothing  could  be  more  odious. 
Some  of  the  elder  statesmen — men  of  the  highest 
personal  culture — knew  how  right  Venizelos  was; 
but  they  recognized  the  tremendous  propaganda 
value  of  the  unpopularity  of  his  views,  and  they 


120  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

were  unscrupulous  enough  to  raise  the  issue  of  100 
per  cent  Hellenism.  This  Cretan,  this  foreigner, 
was  a  traitor  to  Hellas.  What  did  he  want  with  his 
new-fangled  ways,  his  alien — French  and  English 
— notions?  Greeks  were  accustomed  to  do  things 
in  their  own  way  for  three  thousand  years — they 
were  good  enough  ways,  too,  for  were  they  not  the 
ways  of  Pericles  and  Alexander?  If  Venizelos  did 
not  like  it,  why,  let  him  chuck  it. 

The  vote  that  brought  about  Venizelos's  downfall 
was  the  vote  from  the  country  districts  of  Old 
Greece,  the  peasant  vote.  His  following  came  from 
the  larger  cities.  There  is  a  curious,  though  not 
surprising,  analogy  between  the  return  of  Constan- 
tine  and  the  triumph  of  Horthyism  in  Hungary. 
The  Hungarian  White  Terror  was  a  reaction 
against  the  Red  Terror  only  in  a  superficial,  chrono- 
logical sense.  It  was,  in  reality,  a  reaction  against 
Karolyi,  not  against  Bela  Kun — against  the  West- 
ernism,  the  "new-fangled  ways,  alien — French  and 
English — notions"  of  the  Budapest  intellectuals. 
The  hundred  per  cent  Magyarism  of  the  country 
districts,  manipulated  by  the  officers  of  the  army 
and  the  clique  of  Budapest  politicians,  put  Admiral 
Horthy  into  the  saddle.  The  hundred  per  cent 
Hellenism  of  the  Old  Greek  peasantry,  manipu- 
lated by  the  officers  of  the  army  and  the  clique  of 
Athens  politicians,  brought  Constantine  back.  It 
is  no  accident  that  in  both  countries  the  reaction 
represented  the  triumph  of  those  elements  which  in 
the  late  war  had  been  extremely  pro-German. 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     121 
XII 

To  allege  that  Constantine  was  brought  back 
solely  by  the  unpopularity  of  Venizelos  would  be 
unfair.  In  a  sense  his  victory  was  his  victory,  not 
only  his  opponent's  defeat.  Venizelos  was  not  only 
a  foreigner  himself.  He  had  been  hoisted  into  power 
by  foreign  bayonets.  The  best  of  rulers  cannot  live 
down  that  taunt.  "We  don't  want  you  to  govern  us 
well — we  want  you  to  get  out"  said  the  Venetian 
patriot,  Daniele  Manin,  to  the  Austrians.  He 
summed  up  the  inevitable  choice  of  any  spirited 
people  between  good  government  and  self-govern- 
ment. And  Venizelos's  government  wasn't  even  a 
very  good  government. 

Venizelos  committed  perhaps  the  greatest  mistake 
of  his  life  when  he,  in  June,  1917,  came  down  from 
Salonica  to  Athens  on  board  an  Allied  warship. 
Had  he,  instead,  fought  his  way  down  by  land,  the 
Constantinist  troops  would  have  joined  him  en 
masse,  and  he  would  have  been  hailed  as  the  libera- 
tor. This  he  admitted  himself  to  Mr.  V.  J. 
Seligman. 

Now,  if  Venizelos  stood  for  alien  rule  by  grace 
of  alien  bayonets,  Constantine  was  the  martyr  of  his 
Hellenism.  He  had  all  the  emotions  of  a  singularly 
emotional  people  on  his  side.  He  was,  as  Mr.  Mav- 
rogordato  aptly  puts  it,  the  "King  over  the  water." 
Never  is  a  king  so  popular  as  when  he  is  over  the 
water.  A  narrow  strip  of  the  salty  liquid  made  even 
that  dullest  of  small  tyrants,  James  II.,  into  a  hero. 


122  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Constantine  was  a  great  and  good  man — he  did  not 
want  to  drag  Greece  into  the  war — he  was  a  friend 
of  the  people,  said  the  Epistrates  who  were  fed  from 
Queen  Soj^hie's  soup  kitchens — he  was  one  of  our- 
selves, said  thousands  of  military  godfathers. 

Moreover,  all  the  petty  and  great  chicaneries  of 
the  period  October,  1915,  to  June,  1917,  were  over- 
shadowed by  the  more  recent  transgressions  of  the 
Venizelist  bureaucracy  and  the  encroachments  of 
the  Allied  military  representatives. 

"Absence  makes  the  heart  grow  fonder,"  said 
Venizelos  to  a  friend  who  discussed  with  him  the 
outbreak  of  Constantinomania  at  Athens  in  De- 
cember, 1920.  Barring  his  death,  Constantine's 
return  was  foreordained  by  the  manner  of  his 
departure. 

Much  was  made  by  certain  journalists  of  the 
myth  attaching  to  Constantine's  name.  They 
quoted  an  ancient  Greek  legend  to  the  effect  that 
Constantinople,  lost  when  the  Turks  defeated  and 
killed  the  last  Emperor  of  the  East,  Constantine 
Paleologos,  in  1453,  would  be  recovered  to  Hel- 
lenism when  another  Constantine  reigned  over  the 
Greeks.  Nothing  could  be  more  romantic.  Mr. 
Mavrogordato  was  unromantic  enough  to  investi- 
gate. Careful  search  of  Greek  folklore  failed  to 
reveal  the  existence  of  the  alleged  Byzantine  legend. 
Careful  search  of  the  Athenian  press  revealed  the 
origin  of  the  invention.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
existed  a  Byzantine  tradition  that  Constantine 
Paleologos  was  not  killed  by  the  Turks,  but  es- 


CONSTANTINE  AND  VENIZELOS     123 

caped  and  was  hidden  in  Hagia  Sophia  by  an  angel. 
He  would  return,  hke  Barbarossa,  when  his  people 
needed  him.  However,  not  even  Athenian  editors 
have  the  courage  to  assert  that  Constantine  of 
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gliicksburg  is  the 
reincarnation  of  Constantine  Paleologos. 

XIII 

In  1919  the  Greek  troops  fighting  in  Asia  Minor 
picked  up  some  Cretan  Moslems,  expatriated  from 
their  native  island  after  the  withdrawal  of  the 
Turks.  "You  call  yourselves  Greeks,"  said  one  of 
the  Moslems,  "you  have  only  got  here  because  of  a 
Cretan." 

The  taunt  was  true.  It  was  the  truth  of  it  that 
the  Greeks  could  never  forgive  Venizelos. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Robert  Lansing 

S.  B.  Chester 

Herbert  Adams  Gibbons 

Paxton  Hibben 

Demetra  Vaka 
E.  J.  Dillon 

John  Mavrogordato 


V.  J.  Seligman 


The  Big  Four  and  Others  at  the 
Peace  Conference. 

Life  of  Venizelos. 

Venizelos. 

Constantine  I  and  the  Greek 
People. 

In  the  Heart  of  German  Intrigue. 

The  Inside  Story  of  the  Peace 
Conference. 

Greece,  Constantine  and  Ven- 
izelos. Edinburgh  Review,  Jan- 
uary,  1921. 

M.  Venizelos  on  the  Greek 
Situation.  Fortnightly  Review, 
April,  1921. 


124 


THOMAS  GARRIGUE  MASARYK 


"5 


THOMAS  GARRIGUE  MASARYK 


In  one  of  his  letters  to  President  Wilson  Am- 
bassador  Page  expresses  surprise  over  the  fuss 
made  at  the  Court  of  St.  James  a  propos  of  the 
visit  of  King  Christian  of  Denmark,  "a  country 
with  less  population  and  smaller  area  than  New 
Jersey." 

There  you  have  the  typical  American  attitude 
toward  small  countries.  To  Mr.  Page  it  matters 
little  that  Denmark  has  a  better  educational  system, 
a  more  evenly  diffused  material  prosperity,  better 
sanitation,  more  advanced  methods  of  agriculture, 
than  any  other  country  in  the  world ;  that  there  are 
fewer  murders  committed  there  in  a  year  than  occur 
in  a  day  in  Chicago;  that,  all  things  considered, 
Denmark  is  probably  the  most  cultured,  best  gov- 
erned, the  happiest  of  modern  nations.  And  if 
such  is  the  attitude  of  the  American  Ambassador 
to  Great  Britain,  what  can  be  expected  from  the 
man  in  the  street  at  Peoria,  111.?  Yet  to-day  this 
quantitative  standard  of  America  has  conquered  the 
world.  Only  in  a  century  which  measures  the  great- 
ness of  a  nation  in  square  miles  of  territory,  gauges 

127 


128  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

its  culture  by  the  number,  per  capita,  of  automo- 
biles, and  expresses  the  citizen's  worth  in  dollars 
and  cents,  is  it  possible  that  a  man  like  Thomas 
Garrigue  Masaryk  should  not  be  universally 
recognized  as  one  of  the  age's  greatest. 

Not  that  he  has  failed  to  attain  recognition  alto- 
gether ;  for  his  own  nation  idolizes  him,  and  know- 
ing foreigners  are  aware  that  his  name  will  endure 
like  that  of  only  a  few  contemporaries.  But  the 
number  of  the  knowing,  in  Western  countries,  in 
America  especially,  is  limited  to  a  handful  of  stu- 
dents and  speciahsts;  and  this  comparative  obscur- 
ity is  due  solely  to  the  fact  that  he  is  the  son  of  a 
small  nation.  For,  entirely  disregarding  for  the 
moment  his  moral  and  intellectual  stature,  his 
achievements  in  the  field  of  practical  statesmanship 
are  among  the  most  amazing  in  this  age  of  political 
portents.  If  ever  the  resurrection  of  a  people  was 
the  work  of  one  man,  the  resurrection  of  the  Czech 
people  after  three  centuries  of  quasi-extinction  is 
the  work  of  Masaryk.  And  never  has  a  fight  for 
freedom  been  waged  and  won  against  more  formid- 
able odds.  The  Athenians  at  Marathon  were  a 
safe  bet  in  comparison. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  world  war  Masaryk,  then 
a  member  of  the  Austrian  Reichsrat,  fled  from  the 
Dual  Empire  and  began  to  work  for  the  liberation 
of  Czechoslovakia.  This  was  at  a  moment  when 
most  prudent  people  in  Allied  countries,  the  Battle 
of  the  Marne  notwithstanding,  would  consider  an 
eventual  draw,  even  a  moderate  German  victory, 


u.  &  u. 


THOMAS    GARRIGUE    MASARYK 


THOMAS  GARRIGUE  MASARYK     129 

as  an  extremely  favourable  outcome.  Masaryk  be- 
lieved in  Allied  victory,  and  staked  his  all  on  it.  He 
said  that  he  would  align  the  Czechs  and  Slovaks  on 
the  side  of  the  Entente.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  mili- 
tary geography,  this  was  about  as  sound  a  proposal 
as  aligning,  in  an  American-Japanese  war,  the 
State  of  Indiana  on  the  side  of  Japan.  Some 
people  thought  Masaryk  was  bluffing;  others, 
that  he  was  crazy.  But  a  few  influential  and  far- 
sighted  Englishmen  and  Frenchmen  took  him 
seriously. 

Masaryk  disregarded  the  sceptics  and  the  scof- 
fers, and  went  to  work.  Four  years  passed — and 
in  the  summer  of  1918  the  Allies  recognized  the 
Czechoslovak  Provisional  Government  as  one  of  the 
actual  belligerents.  It  was  a  government  without  a 
country,  as  yet,  for  Czechoslovakia  was  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  Teutonic  empires;  but  it  had  an  ex- 
chequer, and  it  had  an  army.  In  September  its 
gold  coins  were  circulating  in  Bohemia,  and  Czecho- 
slovak legions  were  fighting  in  France  and  Italy. 
The  end  of  October  brought  the  end  of  the  Haps- 
burg  empire.  After  three  centuries  of  slavery 
Czechoslovakia  was  free  once  more,  and  Masaryk, 
elected  first  President  of  the  Republic  while  still  in 
New  York,  entered  Prague  in  triumph. 

That  was  an  achievement  of  which  it  is  impossible 
to  speak  otherwise  than  in  superlatives.  And  yet 
his  statesmanship  is  not  the  supreme  fruit  of 
Masaryk's  greatness;  it  is  rather  the  background 
against  which  his  greatness  ought  to  be  viewed. 


130  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

For,  like  that  of  all  truly  great  leaders,  Masaryk's 
is  a  moral  leadership  above  all;  his  greatness  is 
moral  greatness ;  his  tremendous  hold  on  his  people 
is  not  merely  that  of  the  successful  politician,  but 
that  of  an  apostle  of  religion. 


II 


He  spent  his  life  in  fighting  official  Christianity, 
and  fighting  it,  within  his  domain,  very  successfully. 
His  name  is  anathema  not  only  with  the  Church, 
but  also  with  the  churches;  he  is  as  outspoken  an 
opponent  of  stereotyped  Protestantism  as  of 
Popery.  The  conventionally  religious  regard  him 
as  the  Anti-Christ,  the  incarnation  of  rationalism 
and  free-thinking.  And  yet  he  stands  out  as  per- 
haps the  one  real  Christian  among  the  practical 
leaders  of  the  age. 

In  one  of  his  writings  he  asks:  "Has  there  ever 
been  a  better,  more  exalted,  more  divine  life  than 
that  of  Christ?"  And  he  answers  with  Rousseau: 
"If  Socrates  suffered  and  died  like  a  philosopher, 
Christ  suffered  and  died  like  a  God."  In  the  next 
sentence  he  gives  the  clue  of  his  religion.  "Christ's 
whole  life  is  Truth.  God's  Son  is  the  highest  sim- 
plicity, he  shows  purity  and  sanctity  in  the  true 
sense  of  the  word.  Nothing  external  attaches  to 
him  and  his  life,  no  formalism,  no  ritualism ;  every- 
thing comes  from  the  irmer  being,  ever5rthing  is 
thoroughly  true,  thoroughly  beautiful,  thoroughly 
good." 


THOMAS  GARRIGUE  MASARYK      131 

Masaryk's  life  is  devoted  to  the  quest  of  truth 
as  the  highest  simplicity,  the  disentangling  of  the 
substantial  living  thing,  of  reality,  from  the  maze 
of  the  external,  the  incidental ;  his  battle  is  against 
that  formalism  which  stifles  the  essence  of  life.  He 
calls  himself  a  Realist.  The  political  party  which 
he  founded  and  which  ultimately  achieved  the 
liberation  of  his  country  was  called  the  Reahst 
party — the  party  seeking  the  salvation  of  the 
nation  through  recognition  and  moulding  of  real- 
ities rather  than  in  glamorous  dreams  of  past  and 
future. 

Almost  every  person  carries  in  his  soul  the  image 
of  some  event  or  other,  rising  in  an  uncanny  clarity 
from  the  mist  of  childhood's  half-memories — a  cen- 
tral impression,  a  kernel  around  which  later  ex- 
periences crystallizes,  something  that  gives  colour 
and  direction  to  his  whole  life.  Sometimes  it  is  what 
Freudians  call  a  complex;  but  it  is  not  necessarily 
pathological;  sometimes  it  is  a  trifling  detail  that 
acquires  a  disproportionate,  and  to  other  people 
often  unintelligible,  emotional  emphasis.  Masaryk 
tells  of  two  such  epochal  occurrences  in  his  child- 
hood. His  father  was  a  gamekeeper  on  one  of  the 
imperial  estates  in  Moravia,  and  they  were  very 
poor.  Once  in  a  year  the  emperor  came  down  with 
a  retinue  of  nobles  and  generals  and  diplomatists,  to 
shoot  hares,  partridges  and  pheasants.  The  com- 
pany deposited  their  resplendent  cloaks  and  fur- 
lined  overcoats  in  the  cottage  of  the  Masaryks ;  and 
the  whole  neighbourhood,  poor  peasants  all  of  them, 


132  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

foregathered  while  the  shoot  was  on,  to  behold  and 
admire  those  fabulous  garments,  every  one  of  which 
represented  an  unattainable  fortune.  Little 
Thomas  alone  refused  to  look  at  the  display.  "I 
did  not  like  to  see  those  things,"  the  President  of  the 
Czechoslovak  Republic  once  related  this  experience 
of  the  cottager's  boy.  "I  felt  there  was  something 
radically  wrong.  Just  what,  was  not  clear  to  me. 
But  such  a  hate  I  had!  That  hatred  lasted  till 
today." 

The  other  career-shaping  episode  happened  when 
he  was  fifteen.  Being  barely  able  to  read  and 
write  he  was,  at  the  urging  of  his  parents,  about  to 
take  employment  with  the  village  blacksmith.  But 
he  disliked  the  idea.  It  was  not  interesting;  he 
yearned  to  see  the  world,  for  knowledge,  for  ad- 
venture. So  he  packed  his  little  bundle,  went  to 
Vienna  and  became  'prenticed  to  a  locksmith.  He 
stood  on  the  threshold  of  his  dreams.  He  was  in  the 
imperial  capital;  the  wide  world  lay  around  him; 
and  the  trade  of  locksmiths — how  it  attracted  him! 
Locksmiths  were  magicians — they  opened  doors 
forbidden  to  others,  doors  behind  which  were  stored 
he  did  not  know  what  treasures  of  knowledge — 
locksmiths  solved  mysteries  wrought  in  steel  and 
iron.  His  fancy  was  aflame.  Then  came  the  disap- 
pointment. Instead  of  being  initiated  into  the 
wizardry  of  locks  he  was  put  by  his  master  to  oper- 
ate a  machine  of  some  sort  or  another — operate  it 
day  and  night,  twelve,  fourteen,  sometimes  sixteen 
hours  at  a  stretch.    It  was  one  single  movement  re- 


THOMAS  GARRIGUE  MASARYK      133 

peated  thousands  and  thousands  of  times,  turning 
out  some  minor  piece  of  hardware.  At  the  age  of 
fifteen  Masaryk  got  an  object-lesson  in  modern 
industrialism  which  he  never  could  forget,  as  Httle 
as  that  earher  one  in  the  difference  between  rich  and 
poor. 

Hatred  of  injustice  and  hatred  of  the  machine, 
the  soullessness  and  inhumanity  of  it,  became 
Masaryk's  dominant  passion,  the  pivot  around 
which  his  Weltanschauung  turned.  Later  in  hfe 
he  fought  the  Hapsburgs  and  the  Germans  because 
they  represented  injustice.  He  fought  the  Roman 
church  and  official  Protestantism  because  he  saw  in 
them  the  incarnation  of  the  machine,  the  lifeless 
thing  that  demands  living  sacrifice.  He  fought 
capitalism  because  capitalism  was  the  tyranny  of 
the  industrial  machine ;  but  he  also  fought  Marxian 
socialism  because  it  also  was  of  the  machine,  a 
deadly  symmetry  that  would  crush  the  soul  of 
man.  And  the  quest  of  his  life,  the  quest  of 
reality,  is  nothing  but  the  supreme  form  which 
his  hatred  of  injustice  and  of  the  machine  has 
taken ;  for  he  holds  that  through  the  recognition  of 
reality,  and  reality  alone,  can  man  free  himself 
from  bondage. 

The  locksmith's  apprentice  fled  from  Vienna  to 
his  parents'  cottage,  to  the  gloomy  existence  of  the 
village  failure.  But  fate  watched  over  young 
Masaryk.  With  the  aid  of  a  benevolent  priest  who 
perceived  the  spark  that  glowed  in  him  he  succeeded 
in  acquiring  an  education.    He  studied  at  Prague 


134  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

and  at  Vienna,  later  in  the  University  of  Leipzig; 
and,  still  a  young  man,  he  was  appointed  Professor 
in  the  University  of  Prague. 

Ill 

It  is  characteristic  that  the  first  act  which  con- 
centrated public  attention  upon  the  personality  of 
the  future  founder  of  the  Czechoslovak  independ- 
ence was  what  most  people  regarded  as  an  attack 
on  Czech  patriotism.  Mournful  over  the  tragedy 
that  for  three  centuries  had  weighed  upon  the 
nation,  the  Czech  scholars  and  poets  turned  for 
relief  to  memories  of  its  glorious  past.  Greatest 
among  these  was  the  so-called  Manuscript  of 
Koniginhof,  the  charter  of  Bohemia's  historic 
grandeur.  Masaryk  turned  the  spotlight  of  his 
scholarship  on  this  treasure  of  national  lore,  and 
exposed  it  as  a  forgery.  All  Bohemia  was  incensed ; 
he  was  denounced  as  a  traitor,  a  blasphemer  and  a 
German  agent.  Masaryk  stood  the  fire  without 
wincing.  He  took  the  offensive,  and  ridiculed 
those  who  thought  it  necessary  to  bolster  up 
Bohemian  greatness  with  unhistoric  lies.  "A  nation 
that  is  not  founded  on  truth  does  not  deserve  to 
survive,"  he  said. 

From  that  time  onward  Masaryk  never  ceased 
to  pour  scorn  on  romantic  nationalism  and  to 
preach  a  realistic  conception  of  national  needs  and 
duties.  He  contrasted  patriotism,  the  living  sub- 
stance, to  patrioteering,  a  mere  ritual  and  empty 
formalism. 


THOMAS  GARRIGUE  MASARYK      135 

He  exhibited  the  same  strain  of  civic  courage, 
the  same  contempt  for  the  popular  prejudice,  the 
same  love  for  truth  as  carried  him  through  the 
Koniginhof  affair,  in  the  celebrated  case  of  Hils- 
ner,  the  Jew  accused  of  ritual  murder.  Everybody 
in  Bohemia  believed  the  charge;  all  clamoured  for 
Hilsner's  head.  Masaryk  alone  stood  up  for  the 
Jew,  and  proved  the  accusation  of  ritual  murder 
absurd  in  general  and  Hilsner  innocent  in  parti- 
cular. This  cost  him  a  good  deal  of  his  popularity, 
and  one  day,  when  he  entered  his  class,  he  was 
received  with  hooting  and  catcalls.  He  faced  the 
turmoil  for  a  moment,  then  stepped  to  the  black- 
board and  wrote  one  word  on  it — "Work."  Silence 
fell,  and  Masaryk  addressed  the  students.  "Don't 
drink,  don't  gamble,  don't  loaf,  but  work — that's 
what  the  Jew  is  doing  and  you  have  to  do  it,  too,  if 
you  want  to  beat  him."  Thereupon  he  proceeded 
with  his  lecture. 

Never  again  was  he  disturbed.  When  he  related 
this  story  to  me,  he  added,  with  his  peculiar  self- 
conscious,  deprecatory  smile,  as  if  forestalling 
praise:  "God  knows,  I  don't  like  Jews."  He 
meant  to  imply  that  he,  too,  had  his  prejudices, 
that  he  was  not  better  than  the  rest;  it  never  oc- 
curred to  him  that  his  very  dislike  made  his  attitude 
all  the  more  admirable. 

After  all,  it  was  as  it  should  be  that  the  man 
who  restored  the  Czech  nation  was  not  a  soldier 
nor  a  politician,  but  a  morahst  and  a  philosopher. 
Nations  are  known  by  the  heroes  they  honour ;  and 


136  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

the  greatest  and  most  revered  character  in  Czech 
history  is  not  a  general  nor  a  statesman,  but  a 
thinker  and  a  martyr,  Jan  Hus,  the  reformer 
treacherously  burnt  at  the  stake  by  order  of  the 
Emperor  Sigismund  at  the  Council  of  Constance, 
in  1415.  His  personality  stamped  forever  all  that 
is  the  best  in  Czech  character;  and  the  greatest 
tribute  ever  paid  to  Masaryk  was  the  saying  that 
he  was  lineal  descendant  and  re-incarnation  of.  Jan 
Hus. 

The  martyrdom  of  Hus  is  the  climax  of  Czech 
history;  it  was  a  moral  victory  as  great  as  the 
annihilation  of  the  Armada  was  for  England.  For 
Masaryk  the  Reformation,  which  in  Bohemia  as- 
sumed the  form  of  Hus's  teachings,  stands  out  as 
the  greatest  event  not  only  in  Czech  history,  but 
also  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Religion  is  upper- 
most in  his  mind ;  but  religion  to  him  means  Refor- 
mation. But  the  Reformation,  as  he  conceives  it, 
is  not  a  definite  and  finite  fact  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  It  continues  to  this  very  moment.  He 
writes : 

History  is  often  called  a  teacher  and  a  judge.  It  is, 
above  all,  an  obligation.  The  significance  of  our  reforma- 
tion determines  the  trend  of  our  entire  national  being.  Every 
conscious  son  of  the  Czech  people  finds  in  the  story  of  our 
reformation  his  own  ideal.  Every  son  of  the  Czech  people 
who  knows  Czech  history  must  decide  either  for  the  Refor- 
mation or  for  the  Counter-Reformation,  either  for  the  Czech 
idea  or  for  the  Austrian  idea.  .  .  .  Like  all  genuine  refor- 
mation, that  of  our  country  is  still  incomplete.     Reformation 


THOMAS  GARRIGUE  MASARYK      137 

means  an  incessant  re-forming,  uninterrupted  renewal,  a 
striving  for  heights,  a  constant  process  of  perfection;  it 
means  growth. 

It  speaks  well  for  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
level  of  the  Czech  people  that  Masaryk's  teachings 
have  won  a  tremendous  hold  over  them.  There  is, 
perhaps,  no  other  instance  in  our  age  of  one  per- 
sonality stamping  his  nation  as  that  of  Masaryk 
stamp  his  own.  Even  deeper,  naturally,  and 
more  conspicuous  is  his  influence  over  his  pupils 
in  the  university.  A  friend  of  mine,  an  American 
scholar  who  knows  Bohemia  well  tells  me  that  he 
can  single  out  Masaryk's  pupils — they  have  an 
ethical  attitude  toward  life's  problems,  a  serious- 
ness and  a  striving  for  simplicity  that  marks  them. 

Masaryk's  part  in  the  spiritual  growth  of  the 
Bohemian  people  has  been  compared  with  that  of 
Tolstoy  in  the  evolution  of  Young  Russia.  In 
drawing  this  analogy,  however,  one  should  bear  in 
mind  the  fundamental  difference  that  separates  the 
two  thinkers,  a  difference  that  is  not  merely  indi- 
vidual, but  also  national.  It  is  the  difference  that 
defines  Russia  from  the  rest  of  Europe,  that  is 
dwelt  upon  by  Masaryk  himself  in  his  monumental 
work  on  the  spirit  of  Russia,  the  greatest,  perhaps, 
written  on  the  subject  by  a  non-Russian.  It  is  the 
difference  between  the  individuahstic,  activistic 
West,  growing  from  a  subsoil  of  Roman  civiliza- 
tion, Roman  law,  Roman  religion,  and  the  com- 
munistic-anarchistic, passive,  contemplative  East, 
heir  of  the  Byzantine  tradition. 


138  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

The  central  concept  of  Masaryk's  religion  is  the 
idea  of  humanity,  of  universal  brotherhood.  "Bro- 
therhood was  the  name  and  also  the  ideal  of  our 
national  Church,  the  Church  of  the  Bohemian 
Brethren.  The  idea  of  humanity  is  the  fundament 
of  our  reformation." 

There  was  a  Czech  philosopher  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  Peter  Chelcicky,  who  preached  the  idea 
of  humanity.  But  Chelcicky's  humanitarian  ideal 
implied  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance ;  he  held  that 
the  use  of  force  was  evil  under  any  circumstances, 
even  in  self-defence.  Masaryk  tells  of  the  astonish- 
ment of  Tolstoy  when  he  discovered  that  his  own 
ideas  had  been  formulated  by  Chelcicky  four  hun- 
dred years  ago.  Masaryk's  idea  of  himianity  and 
humanitarianism  is  different.  He  defines  it  as  "a 
fight,  everywhere,  always  and  by  every  means, 
against  evil."  His  is  a  rehgion  of  action.  "Hu- 
manity is  not  sentimentalism — it  is  just  work,  and 
work  again." 

IV 

That  utmost  tolerance  is  part  of  Masaryk's  re- 
ligion need  not  be  pointed  out.  During  the  war, 
when  he  went  about  in  the  world  exhorting  to  battle 
to  the  bitter  end  against  German  autocracy,  he 
never  failed  to  emphasize  that  he  bears  no  rancour 
against  the  German  people.  He  adopts  Hus's  say- 
ing, "I  love  a  good  German  better  than  a  bad 
Czech."    In  this,  again,  he  is  thoroughly  Christian 


THOMAS  GARRIGUE  MASARYK      139 

— for  true  Christianity  combines  eternal  hatred  for 
sin  with  forgiveness  for  the  sinner. 

At  a  mass  meeting  in  Cleveland  he  pronounced 
a  terrible  indictment  of  Magyar  tyranny,  in  a  flam- 
ing speech  whose  burden  was  Delenda  est  Hun- 
garia.  At  the  end  of  the  meeting  he  said  to  a 
Magyar  newspaperman:  "Don't  think  that  I  hate 
your  people.  It  is  my  hope  and  my  conviction 
that  we  and  the  Magyars  will  be  friends  yet,  and 
that  before  long."  As  President  of  the  Republic 
he  applied  the  Golden  Rule  to  the  complicated 
racial  problems  of  the  country.  The  result  was  that 
within  three  years  he  gained  the  complete  confidence 
of  the  important  German  minority,  and  enabled  his 
Prime  Minister  and  beloved  disciple.  Dr.  Benes, 
to  conclude  a  treaty  with  Austria  that  amounts 
almost  to  an  alliance.  Yet  anyone  who  three  years 
ago  would  have  predicted  a  Czech- Austrian  entente 
cordicde  as  an  impending  development  would  have 
been  denounced  as  a  hopeless  Utopian  by  both 
sides. 

Masaryk  carries  this  tolerance  into  minute  details 
of  everyday  relationships.  A  lifelong  total  ab- 
stainer, he  disbelieves  in  enforced  prohibition.  Once 
at  a  dinner  party  given  in  his  honour  somebody  pro- 
posed, out  of  deference  to  his  well-known  views, 
that  all  those  present  should  refrain  from  taking 
wine.  Masaryk  protested,  not  with  the  perfunctory 
politeness  of  one  who  does  not  want  to  spoil  other 
people's  fun,  but  with  the  religious-logical  fervour 
of  one  who  defends  a  principle.    He  took  the  stand 


140  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

that  for  people  who  have  no  conscientious  scruples 
to  drink  wine  it  was  right  to  do  so.  Needless  to 
say,  a  little  insistence  carried  his  point.  This  lati- 
tudinarian  attitude  of  his  greatly  shocks  his  wife. 
Mrs.  Masaryk  is  an  American — a  Brooklynite  with 
a  New  England  conscience.  One  of  her  sorrows 
is  that  her  husband,  as  President  of  the  Republic, 
is  obliged  to  keep  a  wine  cellar  for  state  functions. 
She  is  also  very  much  perturbed  over  the  cigarette 
ashes  that  remain  after  a  cabinet  council  in  the 
sacred  precincts  of  her  husband's  study. 

Which  reminds  me  of  a  story  Masaryk  once  told 
about  Tolstoy.  They  were  great  friends,  and  many 
years  ago  Masaryk  visited  him  at  Yasnaya  Poly- 
ana.  It  was  in  the  early  days  of  Tolstoy's  resolu- 
tion to  live  the  life  of  a  peasant.  He  was  an 
inveterate  smoker.  One  day  Masaryk  said  to  him: 
"You  have  undertaken  to  live  as  a  peasant — it  sur- 
prises me  that  you  indulge  in  an  expensive  habit 
which  peasants  cannot  afford."  Tolstoy  said  he 
had  never  thought  of  that  before.  He  put  away 
his  tobacco  and  never  used  it  again. 

Masaryk  is  extremely  devoted  to  his  American 
wife  whom  he  met  when,  back  in  the  seventies,  both 
were  students  in  Leipzig.  Their  romance  began  like 
so  many  others — they  read  together.  Once  he  was 
asked  what  they  had  read.  He  thought  for  a  mo- 
ment and  said :  "Well,  it  was  Buckle's  'History  of 
Civilization'  " — he  smiled,  bashfully, — "you  know 
how  those  things  are."  Shades  of  Paolo  and 
Francescal 


THOMAS  GARRIGUE  MASARYK     141 

One  of  the  most  liberal  and  humane  of  men, 
Masaryk  has  his  blank  spots,  too.  I  remember 
with  what  amazement  I  heard  him  expound  his 
views  on  monogamy.  He  considers  monogamy  as 
one  of  the  basic  institutions  of  our  civilization. 
Good.  But  he  carries  his  conviction  to  the  length, 
not  only  to  utterly  repudiating  divorce,  but  of 
maintaining  that  monogamy  should  not  be  merely 
"simultaneous,"  but  also  "consecutive" — that  for  a 
widower  or  widow  to  marry  is  immoral!  This,  I 
thought  afterwards,  was,  of  course,  the  view  of  a 
man  who  wooed  his  bride,  not  over  sinful  stories  of 
the  flesh  like  Launcelot  and  Guinevere,  but  over 
Buckle's  chaste  and  pompous  work. 


Yet  he  would  be  gravely  mistaken  who  concluded 
from  this  that  Masaryk  is  altogether  too  good  to 
be  human,  a  mere  doctrinaire  puritan,  a  slightly 
overdrawn  Hussite  saint.  There  is  nothing  that 
visualizes  for  me  the  spirit  of  the  man  more  ade- 
quately than  the  story  told  to  me  by  the  above- 
quoted  American  scholar.  He  visited  Masaryk  at 
Prague  in  the  summer  of  1920.  One  day  they  were 
sitting  in  the  hbrary  of  the  Hradcany,  the  proud 
ancient  castle  of  Roman  emperors  and  Bohemian 
kings,  now  the  presidential  residence.  Masaryk 
pointed  to  the  side  of  the  room  lined  with  books  on 
philosophy,  and  said:  "When  I  was  young  and 
stupid  I  read  those  books  to  find  out  truth,  but 


142  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

now  I  read  novels  which  more  exactly  interpret  the 
real  things,  the  struggle  of  man  for  reality."  One 
of  his  students  tells  me  that  in  a  course  of  Practical 
Philosophy  they  used  for  textbook  Dostoevsky's 
"Brothers  Karamazov." 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Je. 


143 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Jr. 

I 

The  overwhelming  victory  of  John  Bratiano  in 
the  Spring  elections  of  1922,  won  immediately  on 
his  reappointment  to  the  Premiership  of  Roumania 
after  two  years'  vacation,  did  not  surprise  those 
familiar  with  the  drift  of  political  events  in  that 
distant  but  interesting  land  of  Latinity  on  the 
Black  Sea.  To  be  sure,  his  triumph  was  attributed 
by  the  Opposition  press  to  "unprecedented  govern- 
mental terrorism."  Pressure  in  elections  on  the 
part  of  those  intra  dominium  is  never  absent  in 
any  country.  Now  whatever  may  be  said  of  politi- 
cal ethics,  political  manners  have  certainly  not 
achieved,  in  the  states  of  Southeastern  Europe,  the 
efficient  smoothness  which  in  the  older  countries 
of  the  West  conceals  political  humbug  and  chi- 
canery to  all  but  the  enlightened  and  articulate 
few.  In  other  words,  when  in  Southeastern  Europe 
some  one  hits  you  on  the  head  with  a  spade,  the 
assault  is  not  aggravated  by  the  aggressor's  polite 
insistence  that  the  spade  isn't  a  spade  but  a  bou- 
quet of  violets,  and  that  anyway  the  whole  affair 
is  staged  exclusively  for  your  own  benefit.  Such 
refinements  are  the  mark  of  a  higher  civilization 

10  145 


146  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

than  that  of  which  the  primitive  nations  of  the 
European  Near  East  can  boast. 

So,  whatever  its  exact  amount,  the  terrorism 
that  assisted  in  M.  Bratiano's  victory  conformed 
strictly  to  precedent  by  being,  in  the  language  of 
anti-ministerial  journalism,  unprecedented.  It  is 
a  fact  that  a  considerable  number  of  Roumanians 
had  for  some  time  looked  forward  to  Bratiano  for 
the  execution  of  that  economic  programme  which  is 
destined  to  secure  for  Roumania,  gatekeeper  of  the 
hardly  tapped  wealth  of  Euxine  lands  and  of  Cau- 
casia, herself  one  of  the  richest  countries,  poten- 
tially, of  Europe,  a  place  of  first  importance  in  the 
continental  hierarchy  of  States. 

No  Roumanian  statesman  has  contributed  more 
to  the  formulation  of  that  programme  than  M. 
Bratiano.  He  is  often  denounced  by  personal  ene- 
mies both  at  home  and  abroad  as  a  reactionary. 
However,  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  it  was  he 
who  conceived,  long  before  the  word  Bolshevism 
was  ever  heard  of  in  Western  Europe,  the  idea  of 
building  a  dyke  against  it  by  creating  a  strong  and 
contented  freehold  peasantry  in  Roumania.  The 
land  reform,  enacted  after  the  war,  and  providing 
for  distribution  of  the  great  estates  among  the  peas- 
ants with  compensation  to  the  old  owners,  was 
originally  championed  by  Bratiano. 

But  Bratiano's  popularity  among  his  people  does 
not  rest  on  the  soundness  of  his  ideas  alone.  Rou- 
manians regard  him  as  the  typical  Roumanian,  the 
representative  man  of  their  nation. 


©  Bruwii  iiros. 


JOHN    BRATIANO,    JR. 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Jr.  147 

Now  there  are  two  senses  in  which  the  represen- 
tative man  of  a  nation  may  be  defined.  In  one 
sense  the  representative  man  is  the  incarnation  of 
the  national  genius,  depositary  of  the  best  racial 
traits  raised  to  the  nth  power.  It  is  in  this  sense 
that  one  calls  Abraham  Lincoln  the  representative 
American,  Goethe  the  representative  German,  Tol- 
stoy the  representative  Russian.  But  there  is  an- 
other, more  humdrum  and  pedestrian  meaning  of 
the  term  "representative  man."  One  that  merely 
implies  a  blend  of  average  racial  traits,  perhaps 
intensified  in  degree,  yet  typical, — that,  plus  the 
quality  called  personal  magnetism.  Using  the  word 
in  this  second  sense,  the  representative  man  of  a 
nation  is  one  whom  women  of  his  own  race  adore, 
perhaps  because  some  deep-lying  instinct  tells  them 
that  he  is  particularly  fitted  to  perpetuate  the 
species  in  its  utmost  purity. 

Roumanians  will  tell  you  that  John  Bratiano,  Jr., 
is  a  representative  Roumanian;  they  will  also  tell 
you  that  he  is  the  idol  of  Roumanian  women.  He 
certainly  possesses  qualities  the  value  of  which  is 
evident  to  the  objective  observer:  he  has  family  and 
wealth,  he  is  extremely  clever  and  very  well  edu- 
cated, he  has  a  good  physique,  he  is  energetic  and 
industrious;  but  all  these  advantages  do  not  quite 
explain,  to  the  foreigner  at  least,  the  peculiar,  one 
almost  would  say,  mysterious,  power  that  he  wields 
over  the  feminine  half  of  his  people.  He  is  irresisti- 
ble. He  is  a  variant,  coloured  by  his  time  and  place, 
of  that  great  eternal  inexplicable  type,  Don  Juan. 


148  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Before  his  marriage  he  was  treated  by  his  coun- 
trywomen like  an  oriental  Sultan.  After  his  mar- 
riage— well,  he  is  an  affectionate  husband,  and  his 
wife — one  of  the  most  charming  ladies  in  Rou- 
mania,  whose  salon  at  Bucharest  is  a  European  in- 
stitution— has  no  reason  to  complain. 

He  is  perhaps  not  handsome  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
taste,  but  his  appearance  is  striking.  With  his  olive 
complexion,  his  long  pointed  black  beard,  he  may 
be  described  as  a  sort  of  Byzantine  Christ  in  a 
morning  coat  and  spats.  But  this  Byzantine  Christ 
speaks  French  like  a  Paris  clubman.  Only  Rou- 
manians can  appreciate  how  thoroughly  Roumani- 
an he  is  even  in  his  exquisite  French  culture — for 
you  cannot  be  a  good  Roumanian  without  being, 
spiritually,  at  least  three-quarters  French. 

Also,  he  is  the  consummate  party  leader, 
equipped  with  all  the  infinitesimally  refined  tools 
of  Eastern  intrigue  and  yet  Western  as  a  manipu- 
lator of  big  finance  for  political  ends.  For  the 
great  banks  of  Roumania  there  exists  one  Rou- 
manian statesman — Bratiano.  The  rest  are  mere 
parish  politicians.  Again,  how  typically  Roumani- 
an he  is  in  his  blending  of  the  political  ideology 
and  methods  of  East  and  West! 

II 

His  part  in  the  Great  War  must  not  be  under- 
estimated. It  was  a  curious  part,  antedating  not 
only  Roumania's  entrance  into  the  war,  but  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  itself.     The  uncertainty  in 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Jr.  149 

which  he  left  the  whole  world  of  diplomacy  as  to 
the  side  Roumania  would  eventually  take  was  a 
master-piece  of  political  strategy.  Vacillation  as 
a  fine  art  had  been  brought  to  the  highest  pitch 
of  perfection  by  Roumanian  rulers  during  centuries 
of  precarious  existence  wedged  in  between  the  deep 
sea  and  a  whole  assortment  of  devils — Turkish, 
Tartar,  Pohsh,  Hungarian,  Imperial.  Bratiano 
proved  a  worthy  successor.  The  Germans 
thought  that  he  would  never  fight  against  them,  but 
feared  that  he  might  not  fight  for  them.  The 
Allies  doubted  if  he  ever  would  fight  for  them, 
but  hoped  that  he  would  not  fight  against  them. 
In  the  moment  of  decision  he  went  in  with  the 
Entente.  The  results  were  catastrophal  for  Rou- 
mania, but  out  of  the  catastrophe  she  emerged  with 
her  population  and  her  territory  doubled,  the  sixth 
largest  country  in  all  Europe,  and  the  dominant 
one  in  the  Southeast.  To  be  sure,  neither  the  catas- 
trophe nor  the  apotheosis  were  exactly  due  to  Brati- 
ano's  efforts — but  it  is  all  the  more  typical  of 
his  paradoxical  personality  that  although  he  had 
slipped  the  reins  in  the  race  he  was  there  when 
the  goal  was  passed,  and  very  much  there  when 
the  prizes  were  distributed.  Moreover,  every  one 
in  his  country  thought  that  this  was  exactly  as  it 
should  be.  Roumanians  have  come  to  acquiesce 
in  Bratiano  as  they  acquiesce  in  the  weather — they 
may  complain  about  it  occasionally,  but  there  is 
nothing  to  be  done. 

At  the  peace  conference  in  Paris  he  scored  an- 


150  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

other  typical  achievement.    Of  all  the  plenipoten- 
tiaries he  was   probably,   not   even   Mr.   Wilson 
excepted,   the  most   thoroughly   unpopular.      He 
succeeded  in  rousing  against  himself  the  emnity  of 
everybody  that  counted — above  all,  the  enmity  of 
the  Big  Three.    What  was  the  cause  of  this  peculiar 
and  emphatic  isolation  of  his  is  not  clear.     With 
Lloyd  George  and  Wilson  it  was,  perhaps,  the  good 
old  Anglo-Saxon  distrust  of  a  beard  too  black  and 
too  pointed  to  be  entirely  honest.    Also,  there  was 
that  subtle  Jewish  influence  over  these  two  arbiters 
of  the  world — one  of  the  most  interesting  aspects 
of  the  Paris  conference,  often  alluded  to  but  never, 
as  yet,  elucidated.     This  Jewish  influence  was  a 
priori  anti-Roumanian,  owing  to  the  old  grievances 
of  the  Romnanian  Jewry.    Wilson's  antipathy  was 
carried  to  such  extent  that  it  was  only  with  the 
greatest  difficulty  that  Bratiano  could  obtain  an 
audience  with  him,  and  when  the  two  left  Paris 
they   were    still    almost   total    strangers    to    each 
other.    But  no  one  was  quite  so  rude  to  Bratiano 
as  Clemenceau,  not  even  Wilson  who  was,  God 
knows,  rude  enough.     Perhaps  M.  Mandel,  Cle- 
menceau's   factotum,   had   something   to   do   with 
this  rudeness.    Perhaps  Clemenceau  had,  in  Brati- 
ano's  presence,  a  feeling  which  whispered  into  his 
subconscious  ears:    "There,  but  for  the  grace  of, 
as  it  were,  God  who  created  me  a  Frenchman,  go 
I."     The  only  one  among  the  important  persons 
who  was  nice  to  Bratiano  was  Colonel  House — but 
then.  Colonel  House  was  nice  to  everybody;  he 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Jr.  151 

could  not  help  it ;  he  was,  as  they  say  in  the  States, 
born  that  way. 

Here  were  indeed,  the  makings  of  a  fatal  failure 
for  a  statesman  and  a  diplomatist.  For  Bratiano 
they  netted  a  political  capital  on  which  he  may  live, 
the  thrifty  soul  he  is,  till  the  end  of  his  days.  He 
held  a  brief  for  Roimiania.  He  stood  up  for  the 
sacred  rights  of  Roumania.  He  was  insulted — in 
his  person  the  honour  of  the  Roumanian  nation  was 
outraged.  If  he  failed  it  was  not  because  he  was 
weak — it  was  because  the  others  were  wicked. 
Bratiano  had  come  to  Paris  as  the  plenipotentiary 
of  the  King  of  Roumania,  and  was  beaten.  He 
returned  home  as  a  national  hero. 

Perhaps  this  strange  fruition  of  success  out  of 
defeat  was  possible  just  because  Bratiano  was  such 
a  typical  Roumanian.  He  had  his  country  un- 
divided with  him  as  no  other  statesman  had  his; 
certainly  not  Wilson,  not  even  Lloyd  George. 
Whatever  else  Wilson  may  have  been  he  was  not 
a  typical  American.  The  English  may  permit  a 
crafty  Welshman  to  rule  them,  they  may  even 
condescend  to  admiring  the  crafty  Welshman,  but 
they  cannot  forget  his  being  Welsh  for  a  moment. 
Then  there  was  Venizelos.  He,  too,  stood  up  and 
fought  the  battle  of  his  country,  and  fought  it  well ; 
yet  his  country  could  never  quite  forget  that  it  was 
not  entirely  his;  that  he,  the  Cretan,  was  after  all 
a  foreigner,  subtle  mercenary  at  the  worst,  clever 
proselyte  at  the  best.  Herbert  Hoover  could  not 
become  President  of  the  United  States  because  he 


152  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

had  lived  in  England  for  several  years.  Wasn't 
the  breakdown  of  Venizelos  due  to  the  fact  that 
he  had  come  to  Greece  at  the  age  of  forty-six? 

Then  Bratiano  went  home,  in  the  triumph  of  his 
defeat.  After  a  while  he  resigned,  but  in  his  coun- 
try everybody  felt  that  this  was  not  so  much  a  re- 
tirement as  an  absence  of  leave.  They  looked 
forward  to  a  Bratiano  ministry  as  something  inevi- 
table. But  Bratiano  remained  in  the  background, 
well  knowing  that  time  was  working  for  him.  At 
the  end  of  1921  his  shadow  was  already  on  the  wall. 
In  January,  1922,  he  was  Prime  Minister  again, 
with  his  rivals  scattered  into  nothingness,  within 
and  without  Roumania — the  one  representative 
statesman  of  the  Balkans.  What  has  the  future 
in  store  for  him? 


Ill 


The  past  had  certainly  been  gracious  to  Bratiano. 
He  was  not,  as  the  French  say,  a  son  of  his  works. 
His  father,  scion  of  a  prosperous  Wallachian  clan, 
played  a  part  second  to  none  in  the  making  of  the 
Roumania  of  to-day.  He  was  one  of  the  leaders 
of  the  revolution  in  1848  which  expelled  the  ruling 
Prince  Stirbey,  protege  of  the  Russians.  Later 
he  had  to  flee  and  took  refuge  in  Paris.  But,  once 
acquired,  the  taste  for  revolutions  is  habit-forming. 
In  Paris  Bratiano  was  among  the  instigators  of 
the  Orsini  bomb  attempt  which  nearly  cost  Napol- 
eon III.  his  life.    Some  revolutionists  are  hanged, 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Jr.  153 

others  are  electrocuted,  others,  again,  guillotined, 
according  to  the  form  that  national  culture  gives 
to  legally  enforced  murder.  But  there  are  revolu- 
tionists who  fare  better.  In  this  snobbish  world 
of  ours  good  family  connections  are  essential 
in  every  walk  of  life,  even  in  that  of  the  bomb- 
thrower.  If  you  are  lucky  enough  to  possess 
them  you  get  fined  only  where  others  get 
finished.  For  his  part  in  the  Orsini  conspiracy 
young  Bratiano  the  elder  was  fined  £120  and  then 
sent  on  a  vacation,  in  one  of  those  lovely  quiet 
establishments  where  sons  of  millionaires  are  wont 
to  live  down  indiscretions,  whether  of  a  financial, 
amorous  or  political  nature. 

The  rest-cure  house  of  Dr.  Blanche  at  Paris  was 
justly  famous,  and  its  guests  were  amply  compen- 
sated by  comfort,  quietude  and  an  excellent  cuisine 
for  the  slight  disadvantage  that  in  plebeian  parlance 
the  place  was  known  as  a  lunatic  asylum.  In  this 
idyllic  retreat  young  Bratiano  spent  some  delight- 
ful years  in  study  and  epicurean  contemplation. 
In  the  end  he  was  freed,  a  wiser  though  not  neces- 
sarily sadder  man,  and  returned  to  Roumania.  At 
once  he  became  leader  of  the  Liberal  party,  the  chief 
political  instrument  in  the  forging  of  Roumanian 
unity.  It  was  Bratiano's  party  which  imported 
Prince  Charles  of  Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen  for 
a  ruler,  which  later  made  a  King  out  of  the  Prince, 
and  which  secured  for  the  new  Kingdom  access  to 
the  Black  Sea. 

Here  I  would  remark,  in  passing,  that  party 


154  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

names  in  Eastern  Europe  are  not  always  inter- 
pretable  by  their  Western  phonetic  equivalents. 
The  Liberal  party  of  Roumania,  like  the  Liberal 
party  of  Hungary  between  1867  and  1900,  would 
have  been  more  correctly  called  the  Mercantile 
party.  It  was  the  party  favouring  Western  methods 
of  finance  and  industry  as  opposed  to  the  patriar- 
chal Oriental  economy,  and  advocating  a  certain 
enlightened  administrative  centralization  as  against 
the  traditional  Oriental  indolence.  It  had  as  little 
to  do  with  philosophic  liberaHsm  as  the  National 
Democrats  of  Poland— originally  the  party  of  the 
Czarophile  and  anti-Semitic  magnates — have  to  do 
with  democracy. 

During  twenty  years  John  Bratiano  the  elder 
governed  Roumania  as  if  he  were  the  real  King. 
He  also  became  the  father  of  a  large  family,  and 
accumulated  a  very  considerable  fortune.  When 
he,  shortly  before  his  death,  fell  from  power,  it 
seemed  that  nobody  would  take  up  the  sceptre 
which  he  had  dropped. 

John  Bratiano  was  his  eldest  son.  He  had 
studied  in  Paris,  was  fond  of  engineering  and  none 
too  fond  of  politics.  But  in  a  small  country  the 
scion  of  a  great  political  family  has  no  choice. 
Some  go  in  for  politics,  others  are  dragged  into 
politics;  all  are  in  politics.  John  Bratiano,  Jr. 
was  dragged  into  politics — people  said,  on  the 
strength  of  his  father's  reputation.  For  years  he 
played  a  quiet,  almost  obscure  part;  but  even  then 
he  was  busy  forming  those  friendships  with  the 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Jr.  155 

great  financiers  of  his  country  which  later  became 
his  principal  asset. 

Then,  little  by  little,  he  asserted  himself.  By 
1907  he  was  the  leader  of  the  Liberal  party  which 
presently  engaged  in  the  advocacy  of  land  reform. 
That  advocacy  culminated  in  the  law  providing  for 
the  breaking  up  of  big  estates  in  1920-21.  The 
idea  of  a  land  reform  from  above  as  the  best  safe- 
guard of  internal  stability  was  Bratiano's  one  con- 
tribution to  Roumanian  politics;  the  other  was  the 
realization,  obvious  enough  to  the  foreign  student, 
but  not  quite  so  obvious  to  those  engrossed  in  the 
personal  intrigues  and  parliamentary  marches  and 
counter-marches  of  a  small  country,  that  Rou- 
mania's  salvation  lay  in  the  development  of  her 
colossal  natural  resources.  Since  1907  Bratiano 
was  sometimes  in  power,  at  other  times  out  of 
power;  but  all  the  time  he  was,  more  or  less,  the 
power;  and  his  countrymen,  including  the  King, 
knew  it. 

Economically  Roumania  was,  largely  speaking, 
tied  up  with  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary,  al- 
though the  bond  was  the  unwilling  one  of  Isolde 
with  old  King  Mark,  with  the  French  Tristan  in 
the  background  receiving  clandestine  tokens  of 
affection.    John  Bratiano  bided  his  time. 


IV 


From  1914  to  1916  Bratiano  executed  one  of 
the  most  notable  performances  of  pohtical  rope- 


156  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

dancing  in  history,  across  the  vortex  of  the  Euro- 
pean war.  He  succeeded  in  keeping  both  the 
Entente  and  the  Central  Powers  guessing  as  to 
Roumania's  real  designs.  The  doubts  of  friends, 
the  trust  of  enemies  were  equally  insulting,  but 
Bratiano  did  not  mind.  "The  double  face  of  the 
weak  is  more  powerful  than  the  sword  arm  of  the 
strong,"  says  an  Arabic  proverb. 

At  last  Roumania  entered  the  war,  at  her  own 
terms.  The  terms  were  good  enough,  but  the 
Allies,  who  underwrote  them,  did  nothing,  or  next 
to  nothing,  to  keep  them.  Roumania  was  overrun 
and  broken.  She  cannot  be  entirely  blamed  for  the 
catastrophe.  She  did  what  Italy  had  done,  only 
under  much  less  favourable  circumstances. 

Assuredly,  Bratiano  had  his  share  of  the  re- 
sponsibility. There  was  always  an  Oriental  ele- 
ment in  him,  which  is  a  polite  name  for  laziness; 
diffident  by  nature,  he  had  occasional  spells  of 
trusting  the  wrong  people;  he  now  was  guilty  of 
an  unscientific  acceptance  of  unverified  premises. 
Wherever  the  blame  lay,  Roumania  paid  a  heavy 
price.  Bratiano  fell.  The  Peace  of  Bucharest  was 
signed  by  the  old  pro-German  politician,  Marghilo- 
man,  as  Premier.  But  just  as  Roumania  owed  her 
defeat  to  Allied  delinquency,  in  the  end  she  came 
out  on  the  top  because  of  Allied  victory.  The 
Peace  of  Bucharest  was  thrown  aside.  Before  the 
armistice  was  signed  Roumania,  though  badly 
maimed,  was  on  her  feet  again,  and  her  troops 
took  possession  of  the  liberated  provinces,  Transyl- 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Jr.  157 

vania,  Bucovina  and  the  Banat — Bessarabia  had 
already  been  occupied. 

The  victory  brought  justification  and  power  to 
Bratiano.  He  was  again  President  of  the  Council. 
He  went  to  Paris  full  of  hope  as  his  sovereign's 
plenipotentiary.  He  had  every  reason  to  be  hope- 
ful; for  the  secret  treaty  which  he  had  concluded 
with  the  Entente  assured  to  Roumania  the  frontiers 
that  she  desired;  also,  equal  rights  at  the  Con- 
ference. 

What  awaited  him  at  Paris  was  the  greatest 
disappointment  of  his  life.  La  Rochefoucauld 
said,  '^On  promet  selon  ses  esperances  et  on  tient 
selon  ses  craintes."  The  Allies  did  not  fear  Rou- 
mania. All  the  pledges  of  1916  were  forgotten. 
The  Big  Four,  or  rather  the  Big  Three,  or,  still 
more  exactly,  the  Big  Two,  dominated  the  scene 
with  dictatorial  power.  The  story  need  not  to  be 
retold.  Everybody  knows  that  the  representatives 
of  the  minor  Allies  were  treated  iniquitously.  The 
representatives  of  Roumania  were  treated  like  dogs. 

They  were  not  admitted  to  secret  sessions.  When 
the  Treaty  of  Versailles  was  being  drafted  they 
were  not  consulted.  Certain  clauses  of  the  treaty 
having  a  vital  bearing  on  Roumanian  interests,  the 
Roumanian  delegates  were  summoned  to  take  cog- 
nizance of  them.  Bratiano  found  certain  provisions 
objectionable  and  rose  to  lodge  a  verbal  protest — 
the  treaty  was  to  be  presented  within  a  day  or  two 
to  the  Germans  and  there  was  no  time  for  written 
exchanges.     No  sooner  was  he  on  his  feet  than 


158  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Clemenceau  shouted  at  him:  "M.  Bratiano,  you 
are  here  to  hsten,  not  to  comment." 

When  the  drafting  of  the  Austrian  treaty  was 
completed  Bratiano  was  shown  the  text  only  on 
the  evening  before  the  document  was  to  be  handed 
to  the  Austrian  delegates.  He  entered  objections 
to  a  number  of  clauses  which  he  thought  injurious 
to  the  interests  of  his  country.  The  objections  were 
recorded.  When  Bratiano  and  his  colleague  Misu 
were  called  upon  to  attach  their  signatures  to  the 
treaty  they  glanced  at  the  text  once  more  and 
discovered  that  the  clauses  which  they  had  opposed 
were  left  unchanged. 

The  humiliations  of  the  Roumanian  delegates  in 
Paris  are  told  at  length  by  Dr.  Dillon  in  his  book 
"The  Inside  Story  of  the  Peace  Conference."  He 
suggests,  among  other  things,  that  in  the  matter  of 
the  guarantees  of  minority  rights  *  pressure  was 
applied  to  Roumania  not  only  by  way  of  satisfying 
Jewish  sensibilities,  but  also  in  order  to  extort  im- 
portant commercial  concessions  for  a  group  of 
Jewish  financiers.  As  he  graphically  puts  it, 
"abundant  petroleum  might  have  washed  away 
many  of  the  tribulations  which  the  Roumanians 
had  afterward  to  endure."  ** 

None  the  less  insulting  was  the  attitude  of  the 

*The  Roumanian  attitude  was,  in  effect,  that  what  was  sauce 
for  the  goose  should  also  be  sauce  for  the  gander — that  they  were 
willing  to  undertake  any  obligation  which  the  Great  Powers  also 
assumed. 

**  The  reader  is  referred  to  Chapter  VI  of  Dr.  Dillon's 
book  for  a  full  account  of  the  higli-handed  methods  of  the  Big 
Three  in  dealing  with  the  Roumanian  delegation. 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Jr.  159 

Big  Two  in  the  course  of  the  crisis  that  arose  in 
connection  with  the  Bolshevist  regime  in  Hungary. 
The  Roumanian  delegates  had  the  impression  that 
the  British,  in  particular,  were  inclined  to  bolster 
up  Bela  Kun's  power  for  the  sake  of  an  early 
restoration  of  trade  with  Hungary.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  the  Roumanians  were  justified  in  feeling  that 
their  pleas  for  safety  did  not  receive  adequate  con- 
sideration. Tired  of  the  constant  snubbing,  they 
at  last  decided  to  take  matters  into  their  own  hands. 
They  were  unexpectedly  assisted  in  this  by  Bela 
Kun  himself,  who  on  July  20,  1919,  attacked  the 
Roumanian  army.  He  was  defeated,  and  the  Rou- 
manians entered  Budapest  in  triumph. 

It  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  history  that  while 
Messrs.  Wilson  and  Lloyd  George  tried  to  ruin 
Bratiano,  the  dictator  of  Soviet  Hungary  should 
have  rushed  to  his  rescue.  Bratiano  scored  a  vic- 
tory not  only  over  Bela  Kun,  but  also  over  the 
Big  Two.  The  latter's  revenge  was  not  delayed 
long.  In  September  the  Supreme  Council,  yield- 
ing to  White  Hungarian  influence,  ordered  the 
Roumanians  to  withdraw  from  Hungary.  Whether 
the  order  was  justified  or  not  is  a  point  I  do  not 
wish  to  discuss  here.  What  is  certain  is  that  the 
line  of  procedure  chosen  by  the  Supreme  Council 
stands  unparalleled  as  an  instance  of  diplomatic 
bad  manners.  Instead  of  communicating  with  the 
Roumanian  Prime  Minister  next  door,  they  sent 
their  ultimatum  to  the  Roumanian  government  in 
Bucharest  by  radio.    There  can  be  no  doubt  what- 


160  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

soever  that  this  was  a  calculated  insult,  a  deliberate 
attempt  to  torpedo  Bratiano.  Indeed,  the  latter 
showed  considerable  restraint  when  he  described  the 
course  of  the  Supreme  Council  as  being  of  a  "ma- 
hcious  and  dangerous  character."  * 

A  generation  earlier  Bratiano's  father,  as  repre- 
sentative of  his  country  at  the  Congress  of  Berlin, 
was  subjected  by  Bismarck  to  humiliations  hardly 
less  galling  than  those  heaped  upon  his  son  at 
Paris.  They  did  not  prevent  him  from  governing 
his  country  for  another  twelve  years — indeed, 
they  strengthened  his  position,  for  the  Roumanian 
people  felt  that  its  own  honour  was  involved.  Curi- 
ously enough,  that  incident  of  the  father's  career 
was  duphcated  in  the  son's;  and  just  as  Bratiano 
the  elder  had  survived  politically  his  overbearing 
enemy  the  Iron  Chancellor,  Bratiano  the  younger 
survived  Mr.  Wilson,  and  for  all  I  know  may  yet 
survive  Mr.  Lloyd  George.**  When  after  two 
years'  retirement  from  active  politics  he  was,  in 

*  Cf.  Dr.  Dillon,  op.  cit.  The  attitude  of  the  American 
representatives  at  Budapest  toward  the  Roumanians  was  none 
the  less  provoking.  In  particular  General  Bandholtz,  head  of 
the  American  mission,  took  pains  to  display  his  antipathy  against  the 
Roumanians,  while  maintaining  friendly  relations  with  the  unspeak- 
able Stephen  Friedrich  and  other  leaders  of  the  Hungarian  White 
Terror.  Not  only  were  the  charges,  circulated  by  the  Magyar  Whites, 
of  Roumanian  atrocities  unfounded,  but  there  is  authentic  testimony 
that  the  presence  of  the  Roumanian  army  alone  prevented  large  scale 
massacres  of  Jews  and  Socialists  by  the  Magyar  Hooligans. 

**  In  1919,  when  Bratiano  resigned  from  the  premiership,  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  asked  the  Roumanian  representative  in  London  to 
convey  his  felicitations  to  the  successor,  and  then  added:  "I  do  hope 
that  I  shall  not  see  M.  Bratiano  Premier  again." 


JOHN  BRATIANO,  Jr.  161 

January,  1922,  appointed  Premier  all  Roumania 
heaved  a  sigh  of  relief — the  inevitable  had  hap- 
pened at  last! 

Today  he  is  the  one  powerful  personality  in 
Roumania.  His  position  is  unique.  What  has  the 
future  in  store  for  him?  Will  it  be  still  more  bril- 
liant than  his  past?  Characteristically,  it  is  his 
enemies  who  hurry  to  answer  that  question  in  the 
affirmative.  One  Bratiano — his  father — had  over- 
turned a  throne;  perhaps  the  streak  lingers  in  the 
son. 

One  of  the  paradoxes  about  Bratiano  the 
younger,  son  of  the  revolutionist  of  1848,  the  Car- 
bonaro  of  1858,  is  his  love  of  the  aristocracy. 
Leader  of  the  party  that  in  Roumania  stands  for 
democratic  progress  and  against  the  pretensions  of 
the  old  oligarchy,  he  married  a  Princess  Morouzi, 
daughter  of  an  old  Greco-Russian  noble  house. 
Divorcing  her,  he  nearly  got  engaged  to  a  French- 
woman, the  Marquise  de  Belloie.  The  affair  did 
not  come  off,  and  he  ended  by  marrying  a  Princess 
Stirbey,  niece  of  the  ruler  whom  his  father  had 
driven  from  Roumania.  All  his  friends  were 
shocked.  "It  is  the  ruin  of  his  career."  It  was 
not.  The  marriage  was  a  happy  one;  it  did  not 
hurt  his  political  affiliations,  and  helped  greatly  liis 
social  ones. 

In  the  study  of  the  Carbonaro's  son  one  could 
see,  with  dedications  that  dazzled  his  followers,  the 
photographs  of  the  Archduke  Karl  Franz  Josef, 
of  the  Kaiser,  of  the  King  of  England — but  the 


162  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

place  of  honour  was  reserved  to  a  huge  oil  portrait 
of  Prince  Stirbey,  his  father's  defeated  enemy. 
That  was  in  the  days  before  the  war;  today  the 
pictures  of  the  Kaiser  and  the  Archduke  are  gone ; 
their  places  are  taken  by  King  Albert  of  Belgium, 
Mr.  Balfour,  and  Colonel  House;  but  Prince 
Stirbey  remains. 

What  is  the  significance  of  this  portrait  in  Brati- 
ano's  study?  There  are  people  in  Roumania  who 
wonder.  Napoleon  married  the  Archduchess  Marie- 
Louise,  daughter  of  the  Emperor  Francis  whose 
empire  he  had  beaten  to  frazzles,  in  order  to  invest 
his  own  greatness  with  a  halo  of  legitimacy.  John 
Bratiano  the  younger  has  married  the  daughter  of 
a  former  ruling  house  of  Roumania.  Even  before 
that  marriage  Roumanians  spoke,  jokingly,  of  the 
Dynasty  of  Bratiano.  Jokes  have  the  funny  habit 
of  turning  serious  at  times.  Bratiano  today  is 
Prime  Minister  once  more.  He  is  by  far  the  most 
powerful  man  in  the  country.  King  Ferdinand,  a 
weak  though  not  unintelligent  ruler,  cannot  do 
without  him.  Those  interested  in  the  development 
of  the  European  Near  East  might  just  as  well 
keep  an  eye  on  John  Bratiano,  Jr. 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI 


163 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI 


No  character  of  the  recent  world  upheaval,  with 
the  exception  of  the  Big  Four  of  Entente  exer- 
cisers, the  Kaiser,  Constantine  of  Greece,  Lenin 
and  Trotzky,  has  been  subjected  to  such  vehement 
and  protracted  abuse  as  Count  Michael  Karolyi, 
first,  and  temporarily,  it  would  seem,  last.  Presi- 
dent of  the  Hungarian  Republic.  He  is  under  at- 
tainder in  the  land  of  his  ancestors  for  high  treason 
— he  has,  so  his  persecutors  tell  the  Magyar  people, 
sold  the  country  to  the  Allies.  In  Paris,  London, 
Rome,  Washington,  that  charge,  of  course,  does 
not  form  the  basis  of  an  indictment ;  so  it  is  twisted 
into  the  accusation  that  he  sold  out  Hungary  to 
the  Bolsheviki. 

He  was  hunted  from  his  country  at  night  like 
a  common  criminal;  and  the  unrelenting  spite  of 
his  enemies — foremost  among  whom  are  his  own 
cousins,  brothers-in-law,  whatnot — drives  him  from 
one  place  of  refuge  to  another.  Once  one  of  the 
dozen  wealthiest  men  on  the  Continent,  today  he 
lives  in  the  penury  of  a  little  flat  of  a  small  Dal- 
matian town;  his  wife,  daughter  of  Count  Julius 

165 


166  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Andrassy,  last  Foreign  Minister  of  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  Empire,  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
women  in  Europe,  hostess  of  resplendent  salons  at 
Budapest  and  Paris,  cooks  his  meals  and  mends 
his  linen;  and  their  children  are  brought  up  like 
those  of  a  workingman. 

Surely  the  outward  contrasts  of  this  extra- 
ordinary career  present  the  outline  of  a  monu- 
mental traged5\  But  in  Michael  Karolyi's  case 
the  external  downfall  envelops  an  inner  flight  up- 
ward, the  attainment  of  peace  with  himself,  a  tri- 
umph over  the  mere  accidentals  of  Destiny.  His 
fate  is  tragic ;  but  his  tragedy  winds  its  way  to  the 
final  kathcvrsis,  the  purifying  bath  of  the  soul.  He 
is  a  poor  man  today,  a  downed  man,  an  outcast,  if 
you  will — but  defeated  he  is  not;  for  his  faith  is 
stronger  than  ever.  He  has  won  his  battle — he  has 
proved  himself  true  disciple  of  the  Son  of  Man 
who  blessed  the  peacemakers  and  the  pure  of  heart. 

II 

Michael  Karolyi  was  born  in  purple — or,  if  you 
prefer  the  homely  figure  of  folk  tale  to  the  classic 
metaphor,  with  a  golden  spoon  in  his  mouth.  His 
family  is  one  of  the  oldest  in  Hungary,  with  a 
pedigree  reaching  back  over  nine  hundred  years. 
His  uncle,  Count  Alexander,  held  the  family  estate, 
estimated  at  over  $30,000,000,  in  entail— an  estate 
second  only  to  that  of  the  Prince  Esterhazy.  When 
he  died  the  entail  devolved  to  young  Count  Michael 
who,  still  in  his  twenties,  thus  advanced  from  the 


COUNT    MICHAEL    KAROLYI 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        1G7 

comfortable  and  irresponsible  state  of  a  junior 
member  of  his  clan  to  a  position  of  unique  splen- 
dour and  responsibility  as  the  second  temporal  peer 
of  the  Magyar  realm. 

The  Karolyi  estate  contained,  among  other 
things,  the  ancient  palace  at  Budapest,  covering, 
with  its  park,  a  site  of  several  acres  in  the  most 
fashionable  section  of  the  city,  and  harbouring 
treasures  of  art  second  to  no  other  private  collec- 
tion in  Europe.  One  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
palace  was  a  ghost.  Count  Louis  Batthany,  a  rela- 
ation  of  the  Karolyi  family,  had  been  Premier  of 
the  first  parliamentary  ministry  of  Hungary, 
a  patriot  of  the  purest  water,  a  statesman  of 
parts  and  of  moderation.  In  the  revolution  of 
1848  Count  Batthyany  held  out,  at  the  jeopardy 
of  his  own  popularity,  for  reconciliation  with  the 
dynasty.  It  availed  him  nothing.  When  the 
Austrians  retook  Budapest  after  the  flight  of 
Kossuth's  government  to  Debreczen,  Batthyany, 
who  saw  no  reason  why  he  should  flee,  was  im- 
prisoned, courtmartialled  and  shot  to  death.  He 
was  arrested  in  the  Karolyi  Palace.  The  Austrian 
general  who  ordered  his  arrest  was  Prince  Alfred 
Windischgraetz.  These  two  details  are  not  un- 
important. 

The  Magyar  nobility  is  noted  for  three  qualities 
above  others — its  extravagant  splendour,  its  dash, 
and  its  wonderful  physique.  The  splendour  is  an 
oriental  heritage.  The  dash  is  reminiscent  of  the 
aristocracy  of  Louis  XIV.,  called  by  Macaulay — 


168  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

hardly  a  favourably  predisposed  critic — the  gal- 
lantest  class  in  history;  of  the  marquesses  and 
chevaliers  who,  clothed  in  gorgeous  silks  and 
snowy  laces,  perfumed  and  periwigged,  charged 
into  the  squares  of  Marlborough's  infantry  with 
the  nonchalance  of  a  cavalcade  at  Versailles.  The 
physical  beauty  of  the  Magyar  nobility  is  the 
mark  of  pure  though  not  inbred  stock,  and 
the  result  of  centuries  of  outdoor  life,  cultivated 
in  Hungary  very  much  in  the  English  fashion. 
The  INIagyar  aristocracy  probably  numbers  more 
flawlessly  handsome  men  than  any  save  the 
English,  and  more  devastatingly  beautiful  women 
than  any  other  whatsoever. 

In  Michael  Karolyi  the  type  of  Magyar  aristo- 
crat was  somewhat  modified.  He  was  well-built, 
tall  and  lithe — good-looking  withal,  but  not  exactly 
handsome  by  the  high  standards  of  his  race.  If  he 
inherited  the  oriental  tendency  for  extravagant  dis- 
play, it  was  mitigated  in  him  by  his  intimate  con- 
tact with  the  West,  where  he  not  only  travelled 
and  amused  himself — that  his  cousins  did,  too — but 
also  saw  and  learned.  But  if  he  had  less  of  these 
two  qualities  than  his  fellows,  the  lack  was  com- 
pensated for  by  an  excess  of  the  third — of  dash. 
From  his  adolescence  he  was  known  for  a  reckless- 
ness verging  almost  on  madness.  His  stunts  on 
horseback  and  at  the  motor  wheel  were  the  talk  of 
a  society  where  physical  prowess  is  taken  for 
granted.  And  his  feats  as  a  gambler  attracted 
notice  in  a  milieu  where  forty-eight-hour  baccarat 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI         169 

or  poker  battles  with  "pots"  running  into  a  quarter 
million  dollars  were  not  infrequent. 

But  if  he  possessed  this  attribute  of  his  class  to 
an  excess,  he  also  possessed  another  quality  which 
marked  him  off  the  rest.  Intellectual  curiosity  is 
not  one  of  the  virtues  of  the  Magyar  aristocracy. 
Had  Matthew  Arnold  written  of  Hungary  instead 
of  England,  he  wouldn't  have  had  to  change  much 
his  description  of  the  barbarians. 

There  were  members  of  the  Magyar  nobility  who 
won  for  themselves  honourable  places  in  the  history 
of  Magyar  culture.  There  was  the  Baron  Valen- 
tine Balassa,  singer  and  humanist  of  the  sixteenth 
century;  there  was  Count  Nicholas  Zrinyi,  epic 
poet  and  miHtary  writer,  in  the  seventeenth.  The 
most  remarkable  figure  of  the  Magyar  spiritual 
risorgimento  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury was  Count  Stephen  Szechenyi,  publicist, 
economist,  historian,  called  by  his  great  enemy 
Kossuth  "the  greatest  Magyar."  The  most  im- 
portant of  Magyar  novelists  is  the  sombre  pupil 
of  Bafeac,  the  Transylvanian  Baron  Sigismund 
Kemeny;  the  leading  exponent  of  the  English  lib- 
eral school  was  Baron  Joseph  Eotvos,  politician, 
humanitarian  and  writer  of  historic  romances.  But 
herewith  the  list  of  names  contributed  by  the  Mag- 
yar nobility  to  Magyar  culture  is  exhausted:  and 
these  men  had  to  fight  as  their  bitterest  opponents 
their  own  class  and  kin.  With  all  their  European 
manners,  with  their  linguistic  gifts,  with  their  smat- 
terings of  the  arts,  with  their  polish  of  international 


170  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

culture  so  markedly  in  contrast  with  the  parochial 
and  patriarchal  spirit  of  the  gentry,  the  Magyar 
aristocracy,  in  its  innermost  soul,  has  remained 
savage  and  Asiatic,  much  more  nakedly  contemp- 
tuous of  things  spiritual  than  the  corresponding 
class  of  other  European  countries.  They  cared 
for  horses,  cards,  wine,  women,  shooting — above  all, 
for  horses.  Their  hippolatry  exceeded,  if  possible, 
even  that  of  the  English.  Their  greatest  represen- 
tative, the  Count  Stephen  Szechenyi,  who  founded 
the  Academy  of  Sciences,  imported  Western  sys- 
tems of  banking,  and  started  the  first  steamship 
line  on  the  Danube,  also  introduced  horseracing  on 
the  English  model. 

In  this  milieu  Count  Karolyi's  bent  toward  ser- 
ious study  was  not  only  noticed  but  also  suspected. 
He  read,  much  and  with  discrimination — he  was 
discovered  in  the  act  of  perusing  works  on  history, 
politics,  even — horribile  dictu — sociology.  It 
wasn't  natural.  It  was  affectation  at  the  best — 
sign  of  sinister  proclivities  at  their  worst.  It  was 
abnormal.  But  then,  of  course,  everybody  knew 
that  Count  Michael  was  abnormal. 

There  is  a  volume  of  memoirs  by  Prince  Ludwig 
Windischgraetz,  the  friend  of  the  late  Emperor 
Charles,  who  during  the  latter  part  of  the  War 
was  Food  Minister  in  Hungary.  His  grandfather 
was  the  Austrian  Field  Marshal  who  in  January, 
1849,  had  Michael  Karolyi's  relative,  the  "rebel" 
Count  Louis  Batthyany,  arrested  at  the  Karolj^i 
Palace.     His  father,  also  a  General,  settled  in 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        171 

Hungary    and    married    a    Countess    Dessewffy, 
of  old  Magyar  stock.     Ludwig  Windischgraetz, 
scion  of  an  ancient  Austrian  house,  was  raised  on 
a  Hungarian  estate  as  a  Magyar  of  Magyars.    He 
was  a  clever,  restless  youth  with  more  than  average 
courage  and  more  than  average  imagination — with 
tremendous  ambition  and  a  whole  assortment  of 
amateurish  abilities  blending  into  an  aura  of  vague 
brilliancy.     He   hunted    lions   in   Africa,    fought 
gangsters  on  the  lower  East  Side  of  New  York, 
was  an  attache  in  the  Russo-Japanese  war,  acted, 
in  the  disguise  of  first  a  mechanic,  then  a  waiter, 
as  a  spy  of  the  Austrian  General  Staff  in  Serbia. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  he  rode,  at  the  head 
of  a  reconnoitring  party  of  half  a  dozen  dragoons, 
through  the  lines  of  a  whole  Serbian  army.     As 
Food  Minister  he  displayed  great  industry  and  re- 
sourcefulness, and  when  all  was  over  he  calmly 
walked  across  the  Swiss  frontier  with  twelve  mil- 
lion  kronen    of   Hungarian   state    funds    in    his 
pocket.    As  this  sum  was  originally  intended  for 
the  purchase   of  potatoes,   he   is  now  familiarly 
known   in   the   Danubian  region   as   the    Potato 
Prince. 

His  book  is  extremely  interesting,  though  ram- 
bling and  unven.  It  has  two  main  themes,  or  leit- 
motivs. Showing  what  a  political  and  mihtary 
genius  he  was  himself  is  one ;  showing  what  a  black- 
hearted scoundrel  his  cousin  Michael  Karolyi  was 
is  the  other.  Its  interminable  loosely-written  pages 
of  self-praise  and  irrelevant  detail  are  illuminated, 


i:^  EMIXEXT  EUROPEAXS 

here  and  there,  hy  the  lightning  of  a  tirst-rate  epi- 
gram, or  the  unforgettable  flashlight  picture  of  a 
character  or  a  scene.  It  is  an  extremely  unreliable 
book — Windischgraetz  must  be  taken  with  a  grain 
of  salt  whenever  he  speaks  of  matters  impersonal, 
and  with  tons  of  salt  wherever  he  speaks  of  matters 
personal.  He  is  never  more  personal  than  when 
he  speaks  of  Michael  Karolyi. 

Michael  Karolyi  was  b«orn  vrith  a  serious  defect  of  speech 
[he  writes.]  It  is  well  known  that  he  has  a  silver  palate,  and 
had,  of  coarse  most  unjustlv,  to  put  up  with  a  good  deal  of 
ndicole  and  manv  slights  on  account  of  this  defect  when  he 
left  the  hothouse  atmosphere  of  his  home  in  his  youth.  He 
felt  this  all  the  more  because  he  had  been  very  much  spoilt 
by  his  parents,  proud  and  haughty  magnates,  for  whom  no 
one  was  good  enough,  and  who  thought  themselves  better  than 
any  one  else.  .  .  .  And  now  people  were  rude  and  cruel 
enough  to  elbow  him  aside,  ignore  him  and  look  down  on  him 
as  on  an  inferior  being.  This  treatment  by  a  pitiless  world, 
and  the  rebuffs  he  received  from  one  or  other  young  lady  of  his 
own  milieu  whom  he  admired  had  already  stung  him  deeply 
and  left  an  incurable  wound. 

This  is  a  mahcious  sketch,  introductory-  to  a  still 
more  malicious  account  of  young  Karolyi's  eccen- 
tricities and  dissipations.  But  like  all  accomplished 
hlagueurs,  Windischgraetz  fortifies  his  malice  with 
ingredients  of  truth.  It  was  true  that  Karolyi  had 
a  physical  defect.  But  the  consciousness  of  this 
defect  mobilized  in  him  a  compensation  mechanism 
that  broke  through  to  expression  not  only  in  an 
inordinate  ambition,  but  also — as  Windischgraetz 
himself,  with  a  rather  self-eonscious  gesture  of  fair 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI         173 

play,   admits — in    an   extraordinary    will   to   and 
capacitj^  for  work. 

Ill 

He  was  still  in  his  twenties  when  he  inherited  his 
uncle's  vast  fortune.  He  also  inherited,  as  it  were, 
his  uncle's  position  as  chairman  of  the  Agricultural 
Society,  the  most  powerful  economic  organization 
in  the  comitry — the  phalanx  of  junker  interests,  a 
second  government,  a  state^within  the  Hungarian 
state.  It  was  not  long  before  Michael  Karohn 
threw  away  his  inherited  career, — just  as  a  few 
years  later  he  threw  away  his  inherited  fortune. 

The  break  did  not  occur  without  preliminaries. 
Young  KaroM  had  first  hit  on  a  path  that  led  so 
many  of  his  betters  to  their  ruin.  He  discovered 
the  most  dangerous  of  drugs,  at  once  a  stimulant 
and  a  narcotic.    He  began  to  work. 

He  set  to  work  [continues  Windischgraet^]  with  extraordi- 
nary diligence  to  retrieve  what  he  had  left  undone;  he  braced 
up  his  muscles,  studied^ agriculture,  history  and  social  economy, 
learnt  to  ride  and  fence,  showed  marvellous  tenacity  in  trying 
to  master  hisdefect^  of  speech,  threw  himself  into  politics, 
and  was  successful  in  every  direction.  He  could  say  with 
pride  that  he  had  given  himself  new  birth  at  the  age  of  thirty. 
He  had  acquired  knowledge;  an  iron  will  impelled  him  to  do 
what  was  beyond  his  strength;  ambition,  pride  and  love  of 
power  led  him  into  extremes,  eccentricities  and  absurdities. 
He  was  never  a  good  motorist,  but  he  drove  with  a  foolhardi- 
ness  that  made  one  nervous  and  anxious;  never  a  good  rider, 
but  he  played  polo  with  amazing  courage;  he  could  not  speak, 
and  made  speeches  which  compelled  respect  and  admiration- 
Michael  Karolvi  be^an  to  show  who  Michael  Karolyi  was. 


174  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

An  excellent,  though  chronologically  over-con- 
densed account  of  the  Karolyi  in  this  particular 
period.  Also,  a  good  instance  of  the  way  in  which 
Windischgraetz,  anything  but  a  fool,  disguises  his 
individual  dislike  and  class  prejudice  as  begrudg- 
ing admiration.  For  Karolyi's  seriousness,  his  pas- 
sionate quest  for  knowledge  was  looked  upon 
askance  by  his  fellow-aristocrats  from  the  outset. 
His  behaviour  was  highly  unprofessional.  He  was 
a  blackleg.     He  worked. 

He  worked  on.  He  was  member  by  hereditary 
right  of  the  House  of  Magnates;  but  in  Hungary 
nobles  possessed  of  political  ambition  usually 
availed  themselves  of  their  privilege  to  renounce, 
temporarily,  their  seats  in  the  Upper  Chamber  and 
sought  election  to  the  Lower.  The  reason  was 
obvious.  The  Magyar  Upper  House  resembled 
nothing  so  much  as  City  Hall  Square,  New  York, 
on  a  sunny  May  afternoon — a  band  of  profes- 
sional unemployed  sleeping  on  benches,  and  in  a 
corner  a  fakir  reciting  in  a  deadly  drone  some- 
thing no  one  paid  any  attention  to.  What  if  the 
loafers  in  the  gorgeous  Gothic  palace  on  the  Dan- 
ube wore  frock  coats,  monocles  and  gardenias,  and 
the  benches  were  of  wine-red  velvet — the  essence  of 
the  two  scenes  was  the  same. 

Karolyi  got  himself  elected  to  the  House  of 
Representatives,  the  real  law-making  body,  and 
joined  the  Opposition  without  officially  attaching 
himself  to  any  party. 

The  name  of  the  Prime  Minister  whom  Karolyi 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI         175 

opposed  was  Count  Stephen  Tissja.  One  cannot 
understand  Karoiyi  without  knowing  something  of 
Tisza;  one  cannot  understand  Hungary  without 
knowing  a  good  deal  of  Tisza.  Stephen  Tisza  is 
the  summary  of  a  period;  he  is  a  chapter  of  Cen- 
tral European  history. 

Was  Tisza  a  great  man  ?  If  indomitable  courage, 
an  iron  will  and  a  contempt  for  petty  personal  ad- 
vantage and  comfort  constitute  greatness,  he  was. 
If  unswerving  devotion  to  an  ideal  is  greatness, 
he  was.  If,  however,  in  addition  to  these  qualities, 
imaginative  sympathy,  a  constructive  understand- 
ing of  human  needs,  be  required;  if  the  value 
of  devotion  be  determined  by  the  quality  of  the 
object  it  serves,  he  was  not  great.  For  he  lacked 
imaginative  sympathy  and  constructive  understand- 
ing. Not  that  he  was  stupid — far  from  it.  He  had 
keenness  though  without  depth ;  he  had  a  good  deal 
of  legalistic  shrewdness;  he  had  mental  dash,  a 
kind  of  dauntless  intellectual  horsemanship,  which 
also  implied  that  he  regarded  difficulties  more  as 
hurdles  to  clear  than  as  problems  to  solve. 

He  was,  unquestionably,  a  personality  and  more 
than  a  personality.  He  was  a  statue,  carven  in 
black  marble,  of  the  fate  of  his  race — an  outpost 
of  Central  Asiatic  horsemen  thrown  by  some  dark 
remote  upheaval  into  a  strange  clime  and  left  there 
to  perish  or  be  adapted — or  rather  to  perish  by 
adaptation.  In  his  heart  of  hearts  Tisza  knew  that 
his  nation  could  survive  only  in  measure  with  its 
power  to  lose  its  identity.    He  hated  Europe,  the 


176  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

West;  he  hated  the  twentieth  century.  At  bottom 
this  sternest  and  most  ruthless  of  RealpoUtiker  was 
a  dreamer  and  a  sentimentaHst. 

But  courage  he  had;  and  faith.  His  faith  was 
in  his  own  race,  a  race  of  tall,  dark,  lithe  Turkish 
warriors  turned  Calvinist;  and  in  himself.  He  be- 
lieved that  his  race  was  sent  to  rule  the  land  of  its 
fathers  and  the  riffraff  of  Slavs  and  Roumanians 
whose  fathers  had  been  indiscreet  enough  to  be  on 
the  spot  when  the  MsLgyar  supermen  arrived,  or 
foolhardy  enough  to  sneak  in  afterward.  And  he 
believed  that  he  was  sent  to  rule  and  save  this  race. 

He  was  tall  and  gaunt,  with  a  slight  stoop, 
angular  of  figure  and  motion;  his  face  was  sallow, 
he  had  his  hair  cropped  close,  and  wore  dark  un- 
gainly clothes.  He  had  large  eyes  ordinarily  of  a 
somewhat  owlish  expression,  but  occasionally  con- 
tracting into  the  quick  flash  of  an  eagle's  glance. 
He  usually  wore  darkened  glasses,  and  for  a  time  he 
was  threatened  by  loss  of  his  eyesight.  Through 
those  grey  glasses  of  his  he  saw  this  world  as  an 
unmovable  gigantic  pattern  of  good  and  evil — he 
derived  his  fatalism,  his  belief  in  predestination, 
both  from  the  ancestral  plains  of  the  Oxus  and  from 
Geneva. 

In  his  scheme  of  things  Good  was  represented 
by  the  Magyar  "historic  classes,"  meaning  the  aris- 
tocracy and  gentry,  and  by  everything  conducive  to 
the  power  and  safety  of  those  classes:  autocratic 
government,  militarism  in  general  and  Prussian 
militarism  in  particular,  property,  especially  landed 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        177 

property,  still  more  entailed  property;  strict  disci- 
pline in  education  for  the  children  of  the  select  few, 
and  strict  discipline  without  education  for  the 
children  of  the  motley  many.  Evil  was  represented 
by  whatever  tended  to  oppose  or  endanger  the 
supremacy  of  the  Magyar  historic  classes :  persons, 
things  and  principles  like  democracy,  the  non- 
Magj^ar  races  of  Hungary,  intellectuals,  liberals, 
Jews  other  than  the  bankers  who  lent  money  to  his 
government ;  Socialists ;  popular  education ;  Serbia ; 
Russia ;  the  Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand ;  freedom 
of  the  press ;  and  the  effeminate  French,  the  allies  of 
Russia.  Curiously  enough,  in  the  days  before  the 
war  he  used  to  speak  well  of  England.  He  admired 
English  legal  tradition  and  the  aristocratic  features 
of  the  English  constitution.  He  was  a  Conservative, 
but  an  eighteenth  century  Whig  Conservative 
rather  than  a  Tory,  for  what  he  feared  more  than 
anything  else  was  a  rapprochement  and  alliance 
between  the  Crown  and  the  Masses  as  against  the 
Classes.  A  fanatic  Magj^ar  and  Calvinist,  he  did 
not  like  the  Hapsburgs,  but  he  was  their  faithful 
servant  nevertheless.  In  his  loyalty  to  his  race-idol 
he  swallowed  even  the  Hapsburgs,  for  they  were 
useful  in  keeping  the  dirty  Slavs  and  unspeakable 
Roumanians  in  their  place. 

His  physical  prowess  was  admirable.  He  was  a 
first-class  horseman,  a  master  swordsman,  and 
before  his  eyes  began  to  trouble  him  an  excellent 
shot.  His  moral  courage  was  that  of  his  opinions. 
He  did  not  conceal  his  manifold  contempts  and 


178  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

prejudices — he  boasted  of  them.  They  were  the 
scales  of  an  armour  behind  which  he  defied  the 
twentieth  century  in  terms  of  the  fifteenth.  He  was 
a  junker,  but  not  a  hypocrite.  He  had  no  use  for 
the  efficiency  devices,  the  quasi-humanitarian  allure- 
ments of  Prussian  junkerdom.  He  did  not  believe 
in  the  scientific  method  and  in  bribing  people  into 
submission  by  social  betterment  as  in  Germany. 
His  fathers  used  the  whip,  and  when  the  whip 
ceased  to  work  the  sabre ;  and  these  means  of  politi- 
cal suasion  seemed  good  enough  for  him,  much 
better  than  factory  hygiene  legislation  and  mini- 
mum wages  and  compulsory  bathrooms  for  tene- 
ments and  other  new-fangled  Prussian  nonsense. 

If  he  ever  was  afraid  of  anything  it  was  that  the 
King  and  the  people — plehs,  not  jmpiilus — might 
get  together.  That's  why  he  hated  the  Heir  to  the 
Throne  with  such  unrelenting  hatred — he  knew  that 
Francis  Ferdinand  planned  to  establish  and  en- 
trench autocracy  by  strictly  democratic  methods. 
Something  of  the  sort  had  already  been  attempted 
in  Austria  where  universal  suffrage,  introduced  by 
imperial  decree,  was  used  to  break  the  back  of  Ger- 
man and  Czech  political  cliques,  although  with 
little  success. 

But  if  he  was  afraid  of  Francis  Joseph  plus  the 
people,  Francis  Joseph  was  afraid  of  Mm,  without 
bothering  much  about  the  people.  It  would  be, 
perhaps,  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  Francis 
Josepli  trembled  before  Tisza;  he  was  too  much  of 
a  gentleman  to  tremble  before  any  one.     But  it  is 


COUNT    STEPHEN    TISZA 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        179 

a  fact,  testified  to  by  the  few  who  knew  him  well, 
that  in  his  latter  years  the  old  Monarch  could  not 
confront  an  emergency  without  asking  himself 
first — ''Was  tvird  der  Tisza  dazu  sag  en?'' 

Tisza's  political  strategy  was  simple.  It  could  be 
visualised  by  that  emblem  of  simplicity  and  of  com- 
pleteness— and  hopelessness :  a  circle.  It  was  based 
on  the  fact  that  the  Crown — Francis  Joseph,  that 
is, — had  one  ideal :  that  of  the  Great  Power.  Now, 
to  bring  the  thing  down  to  its  crudest  terms,  Tisza 
reasoned  thus:  "To  maintain  the  status  of  a  Great 
Power  the  King  needs  two  things;  recruits  and 
taxes.  If  I  supply  him  with  these  two,  he  will  give 
me  a  free  hand  in  Hungary  to  defend  Magyar  su- 
premacy. Defending  Magyar  supremacy  means 
oppressing  Slavs  and  Roumanians;  it  also  means 
fleecing  the  Magyar  peasantry.  But  Slavs  and 
Roumanians  resent  the  oppression,  and  will  foment 
conspiracies  against  the  Magyar  State  with  their 
kin  across  the  frontier.  In  time  the  Magyar  peas- 
antry, too,  will  resent  the  fleecing,  and  will  turn 
Socialist.  Meanwhile,  however,  I  can  utilize  the 
Slav  and  Roumanian  resentment  by  telling  the 
Magyar  people  that  it  must  give  me  more  soldiers 
and  taxes — otherwise  the  Slavs  and  Roumanians 
will  rise  and  devour  them.  I  get  my  soldiers  and 
taxes,  and  give  them  to  the  King,  and  he  gives  me 
a  free  hand  in  Hungary,  and  the  whole  begins 
da  capo."" 

In  other  words,  oppression  was  convenient  not 
only  because  it  oppressed,  but  also  because  it  was 


180  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

self-perpetuating;  it  produced  its  own  machinery. 
The  more  there  was  of  oppression,  the  more  soldiers 
could  be  obtained;  the  more  there  was  of  soldiers, 
the  easier  it  was  to  oppress. 

It  was  one  of  the  most  vicious  circles  in  modern 
history,  and  it  was  called  "maintenance  of  Magyar 
hegemony." 

Yet  Tisza  was  no  hypocrite.  When  he  said  "we, 
the  Magyar  nation"  or  even  "we,  the  Magyar 
people"  he  meant  to  say,  ge7is  Hungarica,  or 
populus  Hungaricus — terms  that  in  ancient  Mag- 
yar usage  excluded  Magyar  serfs  and  all  non- 
Magyars,  whether  serfs  or  freemen.  Gens  and 
populus  were  the  "historic  classes" ;  the  rest — Slavs, 
Vlachs,  peasants,  Jews  and  intellectuals,  formed  the 
plehs. 

The  old  Liberal  party,  so-called  because  it  had 
secured  emancipation  of  the  Jews,  and  founded  by 
Tisza's  father,  returned  to  power  after  an  inter- 
regnum of  five  years  in  1910,  rebaptized  Party  of 
National  Work.  Tisza  soon  resumed  what  he 
called  the  policy  of  the  Strong  Hand — his  termi- 
nology was  as  forceful  as  his  ideas  were  crude.  He 
introduced  a  new  Army  Bill,  providing  for  larger 
contingents  of  men  and  money  than  ever  before. 
The  opposition  besieged  the  bill  by  what  in  Magyar 
parliamentary  idiom  was  called  technical  obstruc- 
tion. It  consisted  in  utilizing  the  Standing  Rules 
for  stopping  business.  Every  member  was  entitled 
to  make  a  speech  of  unlimited  length  on  each 
reading  of  a  bill.     He  could  take  the  floor  any 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        181 

number  of  times  as  a  matter  of  "personal  privilege" 
when  he  felt  himself  attacked  or  slighted  by  any 
other  member.  He  could  interpellate  the  Ministers, 
and  rejoin  to  their  replies.  At  the  end  of  a  debate 
he  was  entitled  to  "closing  remarks."  No  doubt  it 
was  an  awful  nuisance,  this  technical  obstruction, 
the  methods  of  which  were  developed  to  utmost 
finesse  by  the  Magyar  parliamentarians,  greatest 
sticklers  in  the  world  for  legal  niceties. 

Tisza  first  tried  to  break  the  deadlock  by  manipu- 
lating the  Standing  Rules.  This  was  the  reign  of 
a  figurative  Strong  Hand.  It  did  not  work.  Then 
the  Strong  Hand  grew  physical — and  effective. 

One  day  Tisza  instituted  a  parliamentary  guard, 
in  substance  a  detail  of  the  regular  army.  It  was 
in  flagrant  violation  of  every  parliamentary  by-law 
and  tradition.  It  also  turned  the  trick  as  desired. 
The  guards — they  had  beautiful  uniforms  of  the 
best  Magyar  historic  pattern — invaded  the  floor  of 
the  House,  dragged  the  recalcitrant  Opposition 
leaders  to  the  lobby,  and  kicked  them  down  the 
stairs  to  the  street. 

By  this  coup  d'etat  Tisza  made  himself  the  virtual 
dictatoxLof  the  country.  Henceforth  until  the  very 
end  of  the  war — and  of  Austria-Hungary — parlia- 
mentarism was  a  farce  in  Hungary  not  only  in 
substance,  but  also  in  form. 

Prince  Windischgraetz,  an  implacable  though  re- 
spectful enemy  of  Tisza  in  a  later  period,  was  prior 
to  this  coup  an  ardent  partisan  of  the  Premier. 
We  are  indebted  to  him  for  two  snapshots.    One  is 


182  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

from  the  eve  of  the  electoral  victory  of  1910.  Tisza 
asked  some  friends,  Windischgraetz  included,  to 
dine  with  him  in  a  private  room  of  the  Hotel 
Hungaria  at  Budapest.    A  gipsy  band  was  playing. 

When  I  arrived,  [writes  Windischgraetz]  Tisza  was  stand- 
ing in  his  shirtsleeves  in  front  of  the  conductor,  who  was 
fiddling  away  with  his  orchestra  for  bare  life,  and  dancing. 
Tisza  was  dancing.  There  were  no  women  present,  only  my- 
self and  the  two  or  three  other  men  of  the  party,  but  Tisza, 
the  grey-haired  old  man — he  was  past  fifty  at  that  time,  the 
highest  official  in  the  land,  Prime  Minister — was  dancing,  lost 
in  thought,  speechless,  bewitched,  and  fired  by  the  rhythms 
which  are  the  breath  of  life  to  Hungarians.  We  sat  in  a 
corner  and  ate  and  drank  and  talked  interminably.  Only 
Tisza  danced.  Alone,  for  four  whole  hours  without  inter- 
mission, engrossed  in  the  thoughts  the  gipsy  music  set  in  his 
Hungarian  brain.  Now  and  again  he  looked  at  the  conductor 
with  his  large  eyes — the  dark  gipsy  instantly  divined  what 
was  wanted,  changed  the  key,  started  another  and  yet  another 
song,  always  a  Hungarian  song.  .  .  . 

The  other  picture  is  dated  1914.  Early  in  the 
spring  of  that  year  the  extreme  political  tension 
which  followed  the  curbing  of  the  opposition  by  the 
means  described  above  was  relieved,  for  the  partici- 
pants of  the  game  at  least,  in  a  series  of  political 
duels  fought  by  Count  Tisza  with  various  leaders 
of  the  Opposition.  He  fought  Windischgraetz's 
father-in-law  Count  Szechenyi,  the  brothers-in-law 
Marquis  Pallavicini  and  Michael  Karolyi,  and 
others. 

But  the  most  interesting  duel  [relates  Windischgraetz]  was 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI    183 

the  one  with  the  former  President  of  the  House  of  Deputies, 
Stephen  Rakovszky,  an  old  adversary  with  whom  he  had  al- 
ready crossed  swords  twice.  It  took  place  in  a  fencing  saloon 
in  the  town.  Baron  Vojnits  and  Baron  Uechtritz  seconded 
Tisza,  Pallavicini  and  I  seconded  Rakovszky.  The  pugnacious 
old  fellows — both  were  already  past  sixty,  this  is  what  was 
so  remarkable — attacked  one  another  furiously.  They  fought 
one  round  after  another.  Blood  poured  down  their  bodies  and 
over  their  brows  and  arms  from  cuts  and  slight  wounds;  but 
still  they  fell  on  one  another  again  and  again,  and  fought 
eleven  rounds,  puffing  and  blowing,  till  at  last  both  laid  down 
their  arms,  exhausted  and  disabled.  (Old  Rakovszky  would 
not  be  dissuaded  from  going  to  the  front,  a  few  months  later, 
as  a  Lieutenant.  He  rode  meekly  in  the  squadron  of  the  Cth 
Dragoons  commanded  by  his  son,  who  was  a  Captain.  It  is 
well  known  that  Tisza  also  spent  some  time  in  the  trenches 
as  a  Colonel.    Hungary.  -  .  .) 

IV 

Karolyi's  enemies,  led  by  Windischgraetz,  sneer 
at  him  because,  as  they  say,  he  turned  radical  under 
the  influence  of  the  thrashing  administered  by 
Tisza's  soldiers  on  the  floor  of  Parliament.  One 
dpes  not  see  why  drawing  a  lesson  from  a  painful 
experience  should  be  discreditable;  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  however,  the  assertion  isn't  true.  There  is  the 
testimony  of  Oscar  Jaszi,*  the  brilliant  intellectual 
leader  of  Young  Hungary,  a  close  friend  and  yet 

*  Oscar  Jaszi  was  the  founder  of  the  Hungarian  Society  of 
Sociology  and  of  the  leading  Hungarian  monthly  review,  the  Twen- 
tieth Century.  Before  and  throughout  the  war  he  championed 
democratic  reform  and  the  full  emancipation  of  the  Suhject  Races. 
He  was  Minister  of  National  Minorities  in  the  Government  of  Count 
Kdrolyi,  and  went  into  exile  after  the  Communist  upiicaval.  At 
present  he  lives  in  Vienna.     The  following  quotations  are   from  bis 


184  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

an  impartial  analyst  of  Karolyi,  to  the  effect  that 
weeks  prior  to  the  coup  Karolyi  was  already  the 
soul  and  leader  of  the  Opposition.  It  was  he  who 
frustrated  every  attempt  at  petty  compromise,  at 
hushing  up  and  passing  over  things — baleful 
methods  of  Magyar  politics.  Not  physical,  but 
moraJLblows.  says  Jaszi,  swept  Karolyi,  the  con- 
servative aristocrat,  into  the  camp  of  democracy. 
Jaszi  records  a  conversation  Karolyi  had^ith  Mr. 
Julius  Justh,  ex-Speaker  of  the  House,  at  the 
discussed  period  Chairman  of  the  Independence 
Party. 

Tisza  has  destroyed  my  entire  political  past  [Karolyi  had 
told  Mr.  Justh] .  I  can  see  now  that  the  ancient,  much-vaunted 
Hungarian  Constitution  is  nothing  but  a  mirage.  There  was 
no  people  behind  it.  You  can  put  over  anything  on  this  con- 
stitution. If  tomorrow  they  should  want  to  establish  Greater 
Austria,  or  a  military  dictatorship,  all  they  have  to  do  is  to 
despatch  another  Tisza,  and  they  will  obtain  anything  from 
this  Parliament.  It  is  a  body  without  a  will,  a  decayed  body. 
The  only  thing  that  can  save  us  today  is  a  Pariament  of  the 
people.  The  national  cause  must  be  linked  with  the  cause  of 
democracy. 

"The  national  caiis^mustbe  linked  with  the  cause 
of  democracy" — that  was  a  new  note  in  Hungarian 
politics,  a  note  contributed  by  Count  Michael 
Karolyi.  Hitherto  the  national  cause,  championed 
by  the  Opposition,   signified  independence  from 

excellent  book  "Magyar  Calvary — Magyar  Resurrection,"  published 
in  Hungarian  at  Vienna,  1921.  It  is  the  only  reliable  source  dealing 
with  the  two  Hungarian  revolutions,  those  of  October,  1918,  and 
March,  1919. 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        185 

Austria,  or  at  least  more  through  separation;  it 
signified  a  Magyar  court  at  Budapest — or  at  least 
one  for  six  months  of  the  year;  Magyar  language 
of  command  and  Magyar  emblems  for  the  army; 
and  Magyar  diplomatic  representatives  abroad 
equalling  in  number  those  of  Austrian  birth.  The 
most  substantial  of  the  national  demands  was  for  a 
separate  customs  frontier  from  Austria,  and  a  sepa- 
rate Hungarian  bank  of  issue. 

Though  its  upholders  spoke  all  the  time  of  the 
"People"  as  against  the  "Court,"  this  Opposition 
was  oligarchic  in  its  character  none  the  less  than  the 
Governmental  party.  The  two  had  each  a  numeral 
for  a  battle  cry.  That  of  the  Opposition  was  1848, 
the  year  of  the  revolution  and  separation  from 
Austria.  The  Governmental  party  had  1867  on  its 
banner — the  year  of  the  Compromise  with  Austria 
and  the  dynasty,  ending  the  struggle  that  had  begun 
in  1848.  Roughly  speaking,  1867  was  the  party  of 
the  large  landowners,  Jewish  high  finance,  and  the 
Budapest  bourgeoisie,  1848  that  of  the  middle  and 
small  landowners,  the  Calvinist  clergy,  the 
burgesses  of  smaller  cities,  and  such  peasants  as 
had  the  property  qualification  for  franchise. 

Historically,  the  cleavage  was  the  modern  con- 
tinuation of  the  four  hundred  year  old  division 
between  the  pro-Hapsburg,  Imperialist,  Catholic, 
labancz  party,  and  the  Nationalist  and  Calvinist 
party  that  looked  for  leadership  to  the  independent 
Princes  of  Transylvania,  the  Kuruczes  (cruciati)  of 
Rakoczi's  time. 


186  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Democracy  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  pro- 
gramme of  the  Nationals  except  as  an  electioneer- 
ing cry.  Now,  in  Hungary  the  chief  demand  of 
democracy  was  for  universal  suffrage  with  secret 
ballot, — as  governmental  power  rested  on  the  high 
property  qualification  for  the  vote,  a  system  of 
gerrymandering  and  of  pocket  boroughs,  as  well  as 
on  terrorism  made  easy  by  open  polling.  For 
some  time  past  universal  suffrage  was  a  plank  of 
the  Opposition  platform;  but  nobody  took  it 
very  seriously.  In  1905  the  Crown  tried  to  put 
over  the  Austrian  experiment  and  establish  uni- 
versal suffrage  by  decree.  The  plan  was  wrecked 
by  the  autonomous  municipal  system  of  Hungary, 
whereby  the  County  assemblies  could  withhold 
taxes  and  refuse  to  carry  out  ministerial  measures. 
A  general  election  followed,  which  gave  an 
overwhelming  victory  to  the  Coalition  of  the  Op- 
position parties,  chief  of  which  was  the  Indepen- 
dence Party.  This  was  the  first  time  since 
1848  that  the  Nationals  obtained  a  majority 
over  the  Court  party,  and  everybody  expected 
the  immediate  establishment  of  the  Millennium. 
To  that  the  first  step  was  universal  suffrage. 
However,  the  Coalition,  once  safely  in  the  saddle, 
broke  every  pledge  and  sat  down  to  such  unmiti- 
gated revelry  of  corruption  and  reaction  that  by 
1910  popular  indignation  returned  with  a  land- 
slide the  old  Liberal  Party,  led  by  Count  Tisza 
and  revamped  as  the  Party  of  National  Work. 

For  Tisza  universal  suffrage  was  a  contrivance  of 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI         187 

the  Evil  One  himself.  Throughout  his  career  runs 
as  a  leitmotiv  his  bitter-ender  antagonism  to  the 
enfranchisement  of  the  masses.  He  perceived, 
rightly,  that  universal  suffrage  meant  the  end  of 
Magyar  supremacy  in  Hungary  in  the  political 
sense,  for  it  would  give  the  Slav  and  Roumanian 
majority  of  the  population  adequate  representation 
in  Parliament.*  It  would  also  mean  the  end  of 
Magyar  supremacy  in  the  economic  sense — for  in 
Tisza's  mind  Magyar  supremacy  was  identical  with 
the  system  of  big  landed  estates  held  in  entail;  and 
he  knew  that  the  first  thing  a  parliament  elected  on 
the  basis  of  universal  suffrage  would  enact  would  be 
a  radical  land  reform  law.  Here,  indeed,  was  the 
kernel  of  the  whole  problem.  Stripped  from  its 
romantic  trappings  of  race  superiority  and  historic 
mission  and  all  that  sort  of  thing  Magyar 
supremacy  meant  monopoly  of  land. 

Now  the  same  complex  of  reasons  and  considera- 
tions and  sub-conscious  currents  of  sentiment  as 
prompted  Tisza  to  oppose  universal  suffrage  with 
a  fervour  recalling  the  atmosphere  of  religious  con- 
troversy in  seventeenth-century  Scotland  made  his 
opponents  sabotage  the  cause  of  suffrage  by  a  half- 
hearted support  and  equivocal  lip  service  more 
damaging  than  open  antagonism.  Apart  from  a 
few  true  old-fashioned  Radicals  in  the  English 
sense  like  Mr.  Justh,  at  heart  the  leaders  of  the  In- 

*  The  non-Magyar  races  formed  a  little  over  50  per  cent,  of  the 
population.  They  never  gained  more  than  three  or  four  per  cent, 
of  the  seats  in  the  House  of  Representatives  under  the  old  suffrage 


and  division  of  constituencies. 


188  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

dependence  party  and  the  other  Opposition  factions 
were  ohgarchs,  too;  but  unhke  Tisza,  they  lacked 
the  courage  of  their  convictions. 

The  real  support  of  universal  suffrage  came,  up 
to  the  challenge  sounded  by  Karolyi,  from  three 
groups.  There  were  the  intellectual_ radicals  and 
Fabiaa  Sofii^sts  of  Budapest,  organized  in  the 
Society  of  Sociology  and  the  Galilei  Club  under  the 
brilliant  but  somewhat,  necessarily,  academic  lead- 
ership of  Oscax  Jaszi.  There  were  the  trade  unions 
of  Budapest^  weak  but  growing.  And  there  were 
the  oppressed  nationalities,  Slovaks,  Serbo-Croats 
and  Roumanians.  Of  these  three  groups  only  the 
last  had  representation  in  Parliament,  and  that  was 
a  diminutive  one. 


V 


Karolyi's  declaration,  "The  national  cause  must 
be  linked  with  the  demands  of  democracy"  was  a 
challenge  not  only  to  the  Right,  the  party  of  Tisza, 
but  also  to  the  oligarchic  elements  of  the  Opposi- 
tion. It  was  a  declaration  of  war  on  tyranny  and 
humbug  alike.  From  that  moment  onward  Karolyi 
had  to  face  his  former  comrades-at-arms  within 
the  Independence  Party,  the  moderates  following 
Count  Albert  Apponyi  and  Francis  Kossuth,  a 
well-meaning  nonentity,  son  of  the  great  Kossuth, 
with  the  old  programme  of  national  salad-dressing: 
red,  white,  green  porte-epees  for  officers  instead 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI         189 

of  gold  and  black,  Magj^ar  coat-of-arms  for  the 
consulates  at  Port  Said  and  Timbuctoo,  and  Mag- 
yar language  of  command  for  the  army.  Oh  yes — 
the  programme  also  included  the  demand  for  ex- 
tension of  the  suffrage.  Of  the  senior  leaders  only 
Mr.  Justh  went  with  Karolyi. 

Agitation  for  democratic  reform  now  began  in 
earnest.  There  were  agricultural  strikes  in  the 
country,  industrial  strikes  and  demonstrations  at 
Budapest,  dealt  with  by  Tisza's  well-known 
methods.  The  Strong  Hand  was  reinforced  by  the 
machine  gun.  The  general  bitterness  was  enhanced 
by  the  mobilization  orders  following  upon  one 
another  in  the  course  of  the  Balkan  wars  of  1912- 
1913.  The  spectre  of  a  war  with  Russia  loomed  up 
on  the  northern  horizon. 

VI 

It  was  in  the  period  of  the  anti-Serbian  measures 
of  the  government — opposition  to  the  reasonable 
Serbian  den;^and  for  an  Adriatic  port,  and  the  em- 
bargo on  Serbia's  most  important  export,  pigs — 
that  Karolyi  conceived  a  stratagem  that  was  as 
much  of  a  new  departure  as  his  idea  of  linking  the 
national  cause  with  the  demands  of  democracy. 
The  stratagem  consisted  of  extending  the  internal 
battlefront  to  the  field  of  international  affairs. 

Up  to  this  time  Magyar  politics  was  funda- 
mentally provincial.  The  joint  Foreign  IMinister 
of  Austria-Hungary  was  not  responsible  directly  to 


190  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

either  the  Magyar  Parliament  or  the  Austrian 
Reichsrat,  but  to  the  so-called  Delegations,  in  effect 
committees  elected  yearly  by  the  two  legislatures 
for  the  discussion  of  appropriations  of  the  Joint 
Ministries — War,  Foreign  Affairs  and  Bosnia- 
Herzegovina.  Consequently  foreign  policy  was 
hardly  ever  discussed  in  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives, so  much  the  less  as  it  was  easy  for  the  Prime 
Minister  to  dodge  interpellations  by  pleading  "no 
jurisdiction"  and  referring  to  the  Delegations. 

Moreover — and  no  more  convincing  proof  of  the 
utter  superficiality  and  gingerbread  character  of 
Hungarian  political  life  is  needed — there  was  in 
"respectable"  political  circles  no  real  interest  in 
foreign  affairs.  The  Triple  Alliance  (engineered 
by  a  Magyar  statesman,  Count  Julius  Andrassy  the 
elder)  was  the  unquestioned,  God-ordained  basis 
of  everything  happening  outside  the  boundaries  of 
the  Dual  Monarchy.  A  good  Magyar  was  sup- 
posed to  admire  Prussian  efficiency  and  honesty 
(as  opposed  to  Austrian  sloth  and  craftiness),  to 
hate  Russia,  to  despise  all  other  Slavs  except  Poles, 
to  detest  Roumanians,  to  have  a  sort  of  sentimental 
weakness  for  the  Turks  in  their  capacity  of  victims 
of  Slav  imperialism,  and  for  the  rest,  to  give  vent 
to  such  libido  as  citizens  of  other  countries  are  wont 
to  expend  on  international  politics  in  endless 
harangues  against  the  Austrian  partner  of  the  busi- 
ness. 

Magyar  nationalists  insisted  that  the  Hungarian 
coat-of-arms  should  adorn  embassies  together  with 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        191 

the  double-headed  eagle  of  Austria.  Whatever 
went  on  inside  the  embassies  thus  adorned  was  im- 
material. Intelligent  discussion  of  world  affairs 
was  restricted  to  the  radicals  of  the  Jaszi  group ;  but 
these  were  not  represented  in  Parliament,  and  were 
regarded  by  respectable  God-fearing  Magyars  as 
cranks  at  best,  traitors  at  worst. 

The  Balkan  wars  brought  a  change.  There  was 
shooting  at  the  door,  and  a  few  people  awoke  and 
rubbed  their  eyes.  The  realization  dawned  on 
Hungarian  public  opinion  that  foreign  politics  may 
be,  after  all,  a  vital  matter.  It  was  understood  that 
Turkey's  defeat  was  a  blow  to  German-Austro- 
Hungarian  interests:  that  the  victory  of  the  Balkan 
alliance  was  a  Russian  victory.  Tisza's  Army 
Bills,  and  the  expense,  inconvenience  and  uneasi- 
ness of  mobilization  suggested  the  possibility  of  a 
subtle  connection  between  the  stakes  of  high 
diplomacy  and  the  everyday  routine  of  the  man  in 
the  street. 

For  the  average  Hungarian  M.  P.  the  intellectual 
adventure  did  not  proceed  beyond  this  point.  But 
Michael  Karolyi  was  not  an  average  M.  P.  Of 
course  he  had  known  before  this  what  was  going  on 
in  the  world ;  but  now,  all  of  a  sudden,  he  drew  the 
obvious  inference  of  his  knowledge.  It  was  a 
revelation — a  twofold  one.  German  policy  was 
making  for  war :  Hungary  needed  peace — therefore 
the  German  alliance  was  a  bad  thing  for  Hungary. 
But  the  German  alliance  depended  on  Tisza  and  the 
oligarchy — and  Tisza  depended  on  the   German 


192  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

alliance.  Tisza's  Army  Bill  and  strong  hand 
methods,  the  withholding  of  democratic  reform,  the 
suppression  of  Slavs  and  Roumanians,  the  embargo 
on  Serbian  pigs — all  the  things  that  had  hitherto 
completely  filled  the  Magyar  political  horizon,  now 
shrank  to  a  mere  sector  of  the  gigantic  curve  Berlin- 
Bagdad. 

So  far  it  was  all  reasoning.  The  next  step  was 
action.  If  "Tisza — militarism — oligarchy"  meant 
Germany,  the  natural  allies  of  Magyar  democracy 
were  the  enemies  of  Germany.  Karolyi  conceived 
the  idea  of  seeking  moral  support  against  Tisza  at 
Pari^and  Peti:Dgrad. 

The  idea  was  novel  only  in  its  application. 
Historically  the  co-operation  of  the  Magyar  anti- 
court  party  with  the  enemies  of  the  Hapsburgs  was 
an  obvious  and  frequently  invoked  policy.  In  the 
first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  Gabriel  Bethlen 
and  George  Rakoczi,  Princes  of  Transylvania,  were 
the  allies  of  the  Porte  and  of  Sweden.  During  the 
war  of  the  Spanish  Succession  Prince  Francis 
Rakoczi  II  was  the  ally  of  Louis  XIV.  In 
the  nineteenth  century,  Kossuth  sought  contact 
first  with  the  German  liberals,  then  with  Napoleon 
III  and  Piedmont.  Magyar  legions  fought  in  the 
army  of  Italia  Unita. 

Nevertheless  Karolyi's  risk  was  tremendous.  One 
of  the  few  things  in  which  Hungarians,  most 
factious  of  peoples,  agreed  was  their  hatred  of 
Russia.  A  politician  caught  in  having  relations 
with  Petrograd  exposed  himself  to  moral  death  and 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        193 

even  to  criminal  prosecution.  Trials  for  high 
treason  were  to  be  had  cheaply  in  Hungary.  But 
Karolyi  was  not  the  man  to  shirk  the  right  course 
because  it  involved  personal  danger. 


Once  landing  on  the  shores  of  Western  democracy,  [writes 
Professor  Jaszi]  for  a  personality  like  Karolyi  there  was  no 
hesitancy,  no  turning  back.  He  drew  the  conclusions  of  his 
new  standpoint  with  a  passionate  logic — yes,  if  you  will, 
with  the  elan  and  ruthlessness  of  the  sportsman  and  gambler. 
For  Philistinedom  was  right  in  its  instinctive  recognition  that 
the  core  of  Karolyi's  character  was  the  sportsman  and  the 
gambler  in  him.  Philistinedom  was  wrong  only  in  condemning 
him  on  that  score.  There  is  a  fundamental  energy,  there  are 
a  few  dominant  traits  in  every  real  personality  that  remain 
the  same  whatever  their  channel  of  manifestation  be,  just 
as  the  wild  torrent  of  the  hills  remains  the  same  whether  it 
rushes  unbridled  from  cataract  to  cataract  or  is  hitched  to  a 
sawmill  or  electric  power  station.  Karolyi,  the  Magyar  aristo- 
crat, put  all  his  imagination,  his  intuition,  his  unswerving 
courage,  his  chivalry,  his  romanticism  to  the  service  of  de- 
mocracy. It  is  just  this  adventurous  element  in  him  which 
Philistines  of  all  kind  hate  so  unrelentingly,  the  same  Philis- 
tines who  creep  in  adoration  before  any  successful  adventurer. 
Yet  the  great  pioneers  of  today  were  the  adventurers  of  yes- 
terday— or  were  not  Cromwell,  Napoleon,  Bismarck,  adven- 
turers ? 


In  the  spring  of  1914  the  first  advances  were 
made  toward  the  Entente.  At  the  same  time 
Karolyi  made  a  trip  to  the  United  States,  to  preach 
the  cause  of  democratic  reform  to  the  million 
Hungarians  in  America.  His  trip  was  a  success,  of 
13 


194  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

a  kind.  He  raised  some  funds  and  started  for  home. 
The  outbreak  of  the  World  War  found  him  mid- 
ocean. 

On  landing  in  France  he  was  detained,  but 
shortly  afterward  released  and  allowed  to  proceed 
to  Hungary. 

From  the  moment  of  his  arrival  at  Budapest 
Karolyi  conducted  a  passionate  anti-war  and  anti- 
German  campaign.  He  opposed  war  credits,  de- 
nanded  definition  of  peace  terms  and  repudiation  of 
plans  of  conquest,  denounced  atrocities,  attacked 
German  policies  on  land  and  sea.  He  pointed  out 
that  Allied  victory  would  mean  dismemberment, 
German  victory  absorption  by  Prussia. 

In  the  time  of  the  great  German  triumphs  his 
attitude  had  merely  the  moral  value  of  a  demonstra- 
tion, of  going  on  record.  From  1917  on,  when  the 
clearer-minded  in  Hungary  began  to  realize  that 
the  Central  Powers  could  not  win  the  war,  his 
influence  gained;  by  the  summer  of  1918  he  was  the 
rising  star.  All  the  while  the  authorities,  egged  on 
by  powerful  personal  enemies  like  Prince  Windisch- 
graetz  and  his  own  cousin.  Count  Emery  Karolyi, 
did  what  they  could  to  "get"  him,  or  at  least  to  dis- 
credit his  policies.  The  German  High  Command 
detailed  an  intelligence  officer  (vulgo,  spy)  of 
proved  ability,  Major  Consten,  to  ambush  Karolyi. 
Consten  offered  a  bribe  to  Karolyi 's  secretary,  who 
took  it  and  hurried  to  his  master  to  report.  The 
frame-up  was  exposed,  there  was  a  row  in  Parlia- 
ment, and  Major   Consten  had   to  vanish   from 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        195 

Budapest.     The  incident  only  served  to  enhance 
Karolyi's  prestige. 

In  October,  1918,  Austria-Hungary  collapsed. 
In  the  course  of  September,  and  especially  after  the 
Bulganan  surrender,  it  had  become  plain  that  in 
Hungary  only  Karolyi  could  save  the  situation,  and 
King  Charles,  well-meaning  as  always,  utterly  weak 
as  always,  was  restrained  with  difficulty  by  Win- 
dischgraetz  and  the  Jewish  pseudo-democrat  and 
reactionary  demagogue  Vazsonyi  from  appointing 
Karolyi^xemier.  At  last  the  appointment  came; 
but  it  came,  like  the  decree  federalizing  Austria, 
too  late.  When  Oscar  Jaszi  announced  from  the 
balcony  of  the  Hotel  Astoria  that  the  King  had 
appointed  Karolyi  Prime  Minister,  he  was  inter- 
rupted by  shouts  from  the  crowd:  "The  King?" 
"Who  is  King  now?"  "We  have  no  King!"  "The 
Revolution  appointed  Karolyi!"  "Long  live  the 
Hun'gariah  Republicf^'  """""^  

Tlie~BIoodress devolution  of  October  30-31  swept 
King  Charles  aside  and  lifted  the  National  Council, 
the  Karolyist  organization  formed  on  the  Czech  and 
Jugoslav  model,  into  power.  By  a  single  stroke  the 
dreams  of  Hungary  were  achieved — the  dreams 
both  of  independence  and  of  democracy.  Budapest 
swam  in  a  sea  of  pro-Entente  exultation;  Wilson 
was  the  national  hero.  The  Marseillaise  was  sung 
on  the  streets,  in  restaurants,  in  theatres;  British 
and  French  officers  interned  in  the  city  were  cheered 
and  kissed  by  the  crowd.  On  those  two  days,  had 
the  Allies  an  army  corps  available  at  the  gates  of 


196  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Budapest,  it  wouldn't  have  been  able  to  march  into 
the  city — the  population  would  have  carried  it 
through  the  streets  on  its  shoulders.  Never  had  a 
nation  a  more  glorious  dream  of  the  millennium 
descended  on  earth  than  Hungary  on  the  last  day 
of  October,  1918. 


VII 


Alas!  the  dream  was  to  remain  a  dream.  In  his 
book  Professor  Jaszi  presets  a  convincing  analysis 
of  the  failure  of  the  Karolyi  Republic*  There  were 
wonderful  potentialities  in  theory ;  in  practice,  there 
was  not  half  a  chance.  First  of  all,  it  was  too  late. 
Disorganization  had  begun  at  the  front;  streams  of 
soldiers  pouring  homeward,  not  even  awaiting 
orders,  brought  with  them  the  breakdown  of  dis- 
cipline, the  sense  that  everything  was  possible  and 
nothing  mattered  much. 

But  Karolyi  was  too  late  in  another  respect,  still 
more  fatal.  He  wanted  to  preserve  the  old 
boundaries,  the  old  unity  of  Hungary.  The  Mag- 
yar people  would  not  have  tolerated  him  for  a  mo- 
ment had  he  not  promised  to  do  so.  There  was  in 
Karolyi  and  in  most  of  his  associates  an  honest 
desire  to  satisfy  the  oppressed  nationalities  by  a 
liberal  scheme  of  federal  autonomy.  But  the 
clearest-sighted,  Jaszi,  for  instance,  knew  that  that 
could  not  be  done  any  more.     The  subject  races 

•  See  also  the  chapter  on  Admiral  Horthy. 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI    197 

would  have  accepted  federalism  a  year  earlier ;  now 
they  would  not  stop  short  of  secession  and  inde- 
pendence. Jaszi,  on  whom  devolved  the  thankless 
task  of  attempting  the  impossible,  offered  a 
cantonal  solution,  well  knowing  that  it  would  be 
rejected.  It  was.  He  then  suggested  a  plebiscite  in 
every  country  where  over  50  per  cent  of  the  popula- 
tion was  other  than  Magyar.  This,  too,  was 
rejected.  The  Slovaks  and  Roumanians  were 
engaged  in  the  delectable  pastime  of  turning  the 
tables,  and  they  were  not  to  be  cheated  out  of  their 
pleasure. 

The  impossibility  of  forestalling  dismemberment 
alone  would  have  predetermined  Karolyi's  failure; 
but  he  was  pushed  downhill  from  behind  by  the  very 
Allies  to  whom  he  had  rendered  such  important 
services,  on  whom  he  had  staked  all  his  hopes.  We 
know  today  that  it  was  not  the  Allies  who  changed 
suddenly;  it  was  Karolyi  who  had  been  deceived  all 
the  while,  together  with  liberals  in  alMands.  He  had 
taken  Mr.  Wilson  seriously.  Now  he  was  to  pay  the 
penalty  of  his  gullibility.  There  was  a  whole  queue 
waiting  with  him  in  front  of  the  cashier's  window; 
but  no  one  paid  a  heavier  price  than  he. 

The  powder  magazine  of  hunger,  disappoint- 
ment, humiliation,  general  decay  was  there.  On 
MarchJO,  1919,  the  lightning  struck.  On  that  day 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Vyx,  the  Allied  representa- 
tive, handed  to  Karolyi  a  note  establishing  a  new 
line  of  demarcation,  slashing  territories  of  pure 
Magyar    population    off    the    Hungarian    state. 


198  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Colonel  Vyx  added  orally  that  the  new  line  was  to 
be  regarded,  not  as  a  mere  armistice  arrangement, 
but  as  the  final  political  boundary. 

Next  day  the  red  flag  was  hoisted  at  Budapest, 
and  the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat  was  pro- 
claimed. 


VIII 

It  is  in  connection  with  this  event  that  the 
bitterest  charges  are  raised  against  Karolyi.  His 
enemies  assert  that  he  deliberately  turned  the 
supreme  power  over  to  Bela  Kun,  that  he  betrayed 
Hungary  to  the  Bolshevists.  Supposing  this  asser- 
tion were  true — it  would  not,  before  the  tribunal 
of  history,  constitute  a  crime  in  itself;  for  the  sup- 
plementary question  would  have  to  be  asked :  Had 
he  adequate  reasons  to  believe  that  by  hoisting  the 
Communists  into  power  he  was  doing  the  best  pos- 
sible thing  for  Hungary?  If  the  answer  be  in  the 
affirmative,  Karolyi  must  be  acquitted.  But,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  question  need  not,  can  not,  be 
asked ;  for  it  is  based  on  a  wrong  premise.  Karolyi 
did  not  turn  the  country  over  to  the  Communists. 
He  was  not  a  traitor — if  anything,  he  was  betrayed. 
Whether  the  affair  was  a  tragedy  or  a  melodrama, 
Karolyi  was  the  victim,  not  the  villain. 

Karolyi's  indictment  has  been  spread  broadcast 
before  the  public  opinion  of  the  world — above  all, 
by  Prince  Windischgraetz,  and  the  unspeakable 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI    199 

French  calumniators,  the  Brothers  Tharaud.  His 
defence,  published  in  a  single  article  by  the 
Arbeiter-Zeitung  of  Vienna  on  July  25,  1919,  has 
been  ignored  so  far.  Its  main  features  are  presented 
below.* 

Karolyi  begins  by  relating  the  events  that  led  up 
to  the  fatal  Cabinet  Council  late  in  the  afternoon  on 
March  20,  1919,  and  describes  the  presentation  of 
the  Allied  note  by  Lieutenant-Colonel  Vyx.  He 
then  proceeds : 

Lieutenant-Colonel  Vyx  wound  up  his  verbal  represen- 
tations by  saying  that  unless  he  received  an  absolute  ac- 
ceptance by  6  p.  m.  on  the  following  day,  March  21st,  the 
Allied  missions  would  leave  Budapest  at  once.  This  last 
statement  could  only  be  interpreted  as  the  threat  of  a  new 
state  of  war. 

I  at  once  replied  to  Lieut.-Col.  Vyx  to  the  effect  that  his 
demands  were  unf ulfillable  as  they  implied  further  grave 
mutilations  of  Magyar  territory,  mutilations  gravely  infring- 
ing on  both  the  letter  and  spirit  of  the  Belgrade  armistice 
agreement;**  they  rob  us  of  territories  of  ancient  Magyar 
settlement,  and  render  the  economic  reconstruction  of  the 
country  totally  impossible.  The  conditions,  I  said,  were  so 
much  less  acceptable  as  the  short  term  of  the  French  ulti- 
matum (twenty-four  hours)  and  the  immediate  dismember- 
ment of  the  country  precluded  consultation  of  the  people. 

Then  I  continued  my  address  to  the  Cabinet  Council.  I 
realized,  I  said,  that  the  position  of  the  Coalition  govern- 
ment had  become  untenable,  as  the  bourgeois  parties  had 
forfeited  all  moral  support  of  the  country,  so  terribly  humili- 

*  These   extracts    are    translated,    not    from    the    original    article 
written  by  Count  Karolyi  in  German,  but  from  a  Hungarian  trunslp 
tlon  included  in   Professor  Jaszi's  book. 

**  Concluded  with  General  Franchet  d'Esp6rey. 


200  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

ated  nationally.  Only  a  purely  Socialist  government  could 
maintain  law  and  order  under  these  circumstances.  The  fact 
was  that  for  months  the  actual  power  had  been  in  the  hands 
of  the  trade  unions.  If  we  were  to  refuse  the  murderous 
demands  of  the  Entente,  we  needed  a  disciplined  army.  Such 
disciplined  army  could  be  formed,  in  this  period  of  economic 
crisis  and  class  warfare  to  the  knife  (Communist  risings  were 
the  order  of  the  day)  by  the  Social  Democratic  Party  alone. 
...  In  any  event,  only  a  purely  Socialist  government  could 
maintain  itself  in  the  face  of  the  constant  attacks  of  the 
Communists,  attacks  growing  keener  and  more  ruthless  every 
day;  for  under  the  present  Coalition  the  Communists  were 
in  the  position  to  accuse  the  Social  Democrats  of  being  the 
mercenaries  of  the  bourgeoisie. 

Such  a  Socialist  government,  I  continued,  would  be  sup- 
ported even  by  the  bourgeoisie  in  its  defence  of  the  country 
against  imperialistic  raids,  and  in  the  maintenance  of  law 
and  order.  At  the  same  time  the  Socialist  government  would 
enjoy  the  support  of  the  International  as  well. 

I  suggested  that  this  new  Social  Democratic  government 
should  conclude  a  pact  with  the  Communists  to  the  effect 
that  while  the  life-and-death  struggle  against  the  imperialistic 
invaders  is  carried  on  there  would  be  no  disturbance  within 
the  country.   .   .   . 

I  concluded  my  expose  by  saying  that  I  would  not  resign 
the  Presidency  .of_  the  Republic,  but  would  insist  on  retain- 
ing the  rudder  of  the  State  in  my  hands  in  this  difficult  situa- 
tion. If  the  Cabinet,  I  said,  approved  of  my  stand,  I  would 
on  the  morrow  communicate  with  Lieut.-Colonel  Vyx  and 
would  appoint  the  new  Premier,  who,  in  accordance  with  the 
desires  of  his  Party,  would  then  submit  the  list  of  the  new 
Social  Democratic  Ministry.  The  rest  was  up  to  the  new 
Socialist  Government. 

Karolyi  adds  that  his  proposals  were  unani- 
mously endorsed  by  all  Ministers  present.  They  ac- 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        201 

cepted  not  only  his  conclusions,  but  also  expressly 
identified  themselves  with  his  reasoning.  Immedi- 
ately Premier  Berinkey  announced  the  resignation 
of  the  Coalition  Cabinet.  The  Socialist  Ministers 
of  the  retiring  government,  says  Karolyi,  empha- 
sized as  a  conditio  sine  qua  non  of  the  formation  of 
a  Social  Democratic  cabinet  that  he,  Karolyi,  must 
remain  President  of  the  Republic. 

Next  day  was  the  21st.  In  the  morning  Karolyi 
was  advised  that  30,000  metal  workers,  the  best 
organized  and  hitherto  most  conservative  trade 
union,  went  over  to  the  Communists  as  a  protest 
against  the  Vyx  note.  In  the  afternoon  the  Execu- 
tive Committee  of  the  Social  Democratic  Party  had 
a  conference.  This  was  followed  by  a  Council  of 
the  retiring  Ministry.  The  Socialist  members  of 
the  Cabinet  did  not  refer  with  a  single  word  to  the 
proceedings  of  the  Party  Executive  meeting.  They 
had  an  interesting  reason  for  this  reticence. 

That  afternoon  at  three  o'clock,  [continues  Karolyi]  the 
Executives  of  the  Social  Democrats  concluded  a  pact  with  the 
Communists,  proclaiming  the  fusion  of  the  two  parties  and 
the  formation  of  a  Soviet  government  instead  of  the  Social 
Democratic  Ministry  agreed  upon  in  last  night's  Cabinet 
Council.  Of  this  pact  the  Socialist  Ministers  of  my  Govern- 
ment said  nothing,  either  to  me  or  to  their  bourgeois 
colleagues.   .   ,   . 

The  whole  situation  was  thus  settled  in  a  sense  entirely 
different  from  that  of  the  Cabinet  Council  of  the  day  before. 
Early  in  the  afternoon  the  Council  of  Soldiers  decided,  on 
motion  of  its  Chairman,  Pogany,  to  support  the  Communists, 
and  at  6   p.   m.   they   requisitioned   all   available   motorcars, 


202  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

including  those  of  the  Ministers.  The  whole  garrison  turned 
Communist,  and  when  at  7  p.  m.  Garbai  announced  in  the 
Workers'  Council  the  formation  of  the  Soviet  Government, 
the  power  was  already  in  the  hands  of  the  soldiers  and 
sailors.  Of  all  this  I  and  the  bourgeois  members  of  the 
Cabinet  (we  were  still  in  session)  knew  nothing.  It  was 
only  afterward  that  Bela  Kun  told  me  that  they  had  set 
up  four  pieces  of  artillery  on  Mount  St.  Gerald,  with 
the  idea  of  shelling  the  Government  buildings  in  case  of 
resistance. 

Of  all  this  I,  the  President  of  the  Republic,  was  not  in- 
formed. Instead,  after  seven  o'clock,  when  the  news  of  the 
establishment  of  the  Soviet  was  already  spreading  over  the 
city,  the  chief  journalistic  adviser  of  the  Communists,  Paul 
Keri,  confronted  me  with  the  demand  that  I  should,  in 
disregard  of  my  previous  attitude  and  of  the  Cabinet  reso- 
lution of  the  day  before,  draw  the  conclusions  of  the  new 
situation. 

After  what  had  happened  there  was  nothing  for  me  to  do 
but  to  resign.  In  order  to  avoid  absolutely  futile  blood- 
shed— the  only  organized  force  in  the  land  was  that  of  the 
Socialists,  and  the  entire  armed  establishment:  the  garrison, 
the  People's  Guard,  the  police,  the  army,  were  under  Com- 
munistic command — I  signed  the  proclamation  announcing 
my  resignation  and  turning  over  the  power  to  the  proletariat 
— the  power  which  the  proletariat  had  not  only  seized 
previously,  but  had  also  proclaimed.  I  preferred  this  sacri- 
fice to  assuming  the  cheap  martyrdom  of  letting  them  arrest 
me,  because  I  wanted  to  avoid  bloodshed  and  mass  murder 
in  the  streets  of  Budapest,  to  spare  the  country  from  the 
worst  horrors  of  civil  war. 

This  is,  in  brief,  the  true  story  of  the  proclamation  of  the 
Soviet  Republic.  I  did  not  turn  the  power  over  to  the  Pro- 
letariat— the  Proletariat  itself  had  acquired  the  power  by  the 
systematic  building  up  of  a  Socialist  army.  I  had  no  choice. 
The  alternatives  were  bloodshed  and  civil  war,  or  bowing  be- 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        203 

fore  a  fait  accompli.  I  might  have  chosen  the  cheap  role 
of  the  martyr  of  the  bourgeoisie — it  would  not  have  cost  me 
anything  beyond  getting  arrested — but  it  might  have  coat 
Budapest  hundreds  of  lives. 

Karolyi's  narrative  is  endorsed  by  Professor 
Jaszi,  himself  a  member  of  the  Coalition  govern- 
ment. He  arrived  late  at  the  Cabinet  Council  on 
March  20,  and  on  being  told  of  what  had  happened 
acceded  without  reservation  to  the  decision  of  the 
Council.  He  was  one  of  the  bourgeois  Ministers 
who  were  left  unenlightened  by  their  Socialist  col- 
leagues of  the  Communist  coup  until  after  the  event. 

Never  have  I  felt  more  clearly  [he  writes]  the  power  of 
the  magnetic  fields  of  the  mass  soul  than  on  the  fatal  night 
of  March  21.  I  beheld  Karolyists,  Radicals,  Social  Demo- 
crats, even  Communists,  all  agreeing  in  those  hours  that  it 
was  impossible  to  submit  to  the  brutal  violence  of  the  Vyx 
note.  We  knew  what  we  had  at  stake.  But  all  the  misery, 
despair,  humiliation  of  the  past  six  months,  all  the  baseness 
and  perfidy  of  it,  strained  to  the  snapping  point  the  bow  of 
our  bitterness.  Yes,  it  was  at  a  tragic  conflict  between  the 
pacifism  and  political  realism  of  our  conscious  mind,  and  the 
nationalisai  and  instinctive  sense  of  justice  of  our  sub- 
conscious. 


IX 

Karolyi  was  downed — forgotten,  for  the  moment, 
by  the  people  for  which  he  had  sacrificed  his  all, 
betrayed  by  the  Entente  whose  supporter  he  had 
been  throughout  the  ordeal  of  five  years,  tricked  by 


204  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

his  friends  and  cooperators.  He  retired  to  his  villa 
on  the  Schwabenberg,  a  suburb  of  Budapest.  But 
his  cup  was  not  filled  yet. 

It  happened  during  his  American  trip  in  the 
spring  of  1914  that,  while  addressing  a  mass  meet- 
ing of  Hungarians,  he  was  asked  by  a  heckler  why 
he  did  not  live  up  to  his  principles  and  turn  over 
his  vast  estates  to  the  Hungarian  people. 

I  will  not  give  my  estates  to  the  Magyar  people,  [he  an- 
swered] because  I  want  the  people  to  come  and  take  them 
away.  I  won't  give  alms  to  my  people  and  I  won't  bribe 
them.  The  land  belongs  to  them  by  right — when  they  awake 
to  this  they'll  go  and  seize  it,  and  as  far  as  I  am  concerned 
they  are  entirely  welcome. 

His  government  never  had  a  chance  to  carry  out 
its  project  of  breaking  up  the  landed  estates,  the 
most  important  step  toward  the  democratization  of 
the  country.  But  after  he  was  elected  President  he 
offered,  as  a  preliminary  to  the  wholesale  reform, 
his  estates  to  the  people.  The  estabhshment  of 
the  Soviet  government  found  him  already  a  poor 
man. 

Soon  after  the  Communist  coup  his  friends  got 
wind  of  a  conspiracy  hatched  by  noble  officers  of 
the  army  for  his  assassination.  Jaszi  called  on  him 
in  the  garden  of  his  Schwabenberg  villa  and  tried 
to  persuade  him  to  leave  the  country.  Karolyi 
listened  sadly.  Aji  emaciated  cow,  purveyor  of 
milk  for  the  children  of  the  ex-President,  was  graz- 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        205 

ing  on  the  lawn.  Jaszi  looked  at  the  cow.  Karoiyi 
must  have  suddenly  realized  the  symbolism  of  the 
scene,  for  he  pointed  at  the  poor  beast  with  a  bitter 
smile.  "Voila,"  he  said,  "les  dernieres  restes  d'une 
fortune  jadis  presque  princiere." 

But  even  that  miserable  cow  did  not  last  forever. 
The  Allied  blockade  was  winding  tighter  and 
tighter  around  Soviet  Hungary.  Budapest  was 
put  on  starvation  rations.  There  was  no  milk  in 
the  city.  There  was  no  milk  for  the  children  of 
Count  Michael  Karoiyi,  ex-President  of  the  Repub- 
lic, but'  yesterday  one  of  the  greatest  feudal  lords 
of  Europe,  recipient  of  a  yearly  income  of  a  million 
dollars. 

Professor  Philip  Marshall  Brown  of  Princeton 
University,  late  American  charge  d'affaires  at  Con- 
stantinople, was  at  this  time  attached  to  one  of  the 
American  missions  at  Budapest.  He  liked  Karoiyi 
— he  admired  his  unselfish  devotion,  his  idealism,  his 
courage  under  the  ordeal.  One  day  Karoiyi  came 
to  him  and  asked  for  a  tin  or  two  of  condensed 
milk — for  his  new-born  baby.  Professor  Brown 
gave  him  a  dozen  tins,  all  he  had  at  the  time.  He 
had  tears  in  his  eyes  when  he  told  me  this  story 
after  his  return  to  America. 

The  first  week  of  August,  1919,  brought  the 
debacle  of  the  Soviet,  and  Karoiyi,  who  had  lived  in 
utter  seclusion  ever  since  March,  was  now  hunted 
out  by  the  victorious  Whites.  He,  his  wife  and  his 
children  had  to  flee  on  foot,  at  night,  pushing  their 
belongings  on  a  little  cart,  in  constant  danger  of 


206  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

being  caught,  until  they  reached  the  Czechoslovak 
frontier  and  safety.  The  ex-President  settled  down 
in  a  little  town,  Gablonz,  living  with  his  family  in 
two  rooms  of  a  garret.  He  made  friends  with  the 
townspeople — everybody  loved  him  and  his  wife, 
and  when  news  came  that  the  Horthy  government 
had  dispatched  officers  in  disguise  to  murder  him, 
the  burghers  and  artisans  of  Gablonz  organized  an 
armed  guard  to  protect  their  guest. 

Nevertheless  Gablonz  was  too  near  the  Hun- 
garian border  to  be  a  safe  place  for  Karolyi.  He 
went  to  Italy.  But  the  hands  of  Horthy,  like  those 
of  Ali  Pasha  of  lanina,  are  long.  The  services  of 
a  female  agent  provocateur,  one  Miss  Tiirr — (she 
had  a  personal  grudge  against  Karolyi:  she  had 
asked  for  an  appointment  as  publicity  representa- 
tive of  his  government  in  Italy,  and  was  refused) 
— were  enlisted  to  implicate  Karolyi  in  conversa- 
tions with  Bolshevik  refugees.  One  day  Karolyi 
was  ordered  by  Premier  Giolitti  to  leave  Italy.  The 
Jugoslav  government  now  offered  him  asyjum.  He 
accepted.  Since  the  spring  of  1921  Karolyi  is  liv- 
ing with  his  wife  and  children  at  Spalato,  in  Dal- 
matia,  in  utter  poverty.  The  National  Assembly 
of  White  Hungary  passed  a  bill  of  attainder — his 
estates  have  been  confiscated,  and  he  is  too  proud  to 
accept  help  from  his  friends. 

But  his  spirit  is  undaunted.  He  and  his  wife — ■ 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  women  in  Europe,  who 
adores  him — have  broken  with  their  past  com- 
pletely.    In  their  souls,  writes  their  friend  Jaszi, 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        207 

has  blossomed  forth  a  new  solidarity  that  links  them 
with  suffering,  struggling  humankind.  "The  ter- 
rible crisis  which  nearly  killed  him  swung  upward 
into  a  magnificent  katharsis,  out  of  which  he  passed, 
more  spirited,  better  prepared  to  battle  for  the 
right,  than  ever.  He  believes  in  the  cause  of  which 
he  was  the  protagonist,  even  though  he  sometimes 
despairs  of  his  personal  fortunes.  .  .  .  He  has 
made  arrangements  that  should  he  ever  be  restored 
into  his  ancestral  wealth  his  wife  and  children  shall 
receive  only  a  sum  sufficient  to  insure  a  modest  liv- 
ing, that  of  the  average  brain  worker — the  rest  of 
the  estates  shall  be  turned  into  a  foundation  to 
promote  social  betterment  and  popular  culture." 

Michael  Karolyi  and  his  wife,  Catherine  An- 
drassy,  have  lost  all  they  had  possessed  in  this  world, 
but  they  have  found  a  treasure  that  compensates 
them  for  their  loss.  They  have  found  their  souls. 
There  are  in  Europe  today  no  more  ardent  So- 
cialists than  Count  and  Countess  Michael  Karolyi. 
That  they  are  naive  dogmatists?  That  they  expect 
the  impossible?  True.  The  early  Christians  were 
naive  dogmatists.  They  expected  the  impossible. 
We  know  that  Socialism  is  not  a  panacea — that 
there  are  no  panaceas.  Are  we,  in  our  sober  wis- 
dom, happier  than  the  Count  and  Countess  Karo- 
lyi in  their  dream?  After  all,  for  the  individual 
it  is  not  the  contents  of  religion  that  matters — it 
is  religion.  "Blessed  are  they  which  do  hunger 
and  thirst  after  righteousness;  for  they  shall  be 
filled." 


208  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

X 

Karolyi's  greatest  fault — one  which  contributed 
much  to  his  downfall — is  that  he  is  a  bad  judge  of 
character.  He  trusts  people  beyond  the  limits  of 
reason.  "He  has  something  in  him,"  writes  Jaszi, 
"of  Dostoevsky's  Idiot,  so  called  because  he  takes 
principles  and  men  seriously  with  the  naivete  of  a 
child.  .  .  .  Democracy,  socialism,  pacifism  were  for 
him,  not  political  theories,  but  moral  realities,  tre- 
mendous live  beings,  as  it  were,  persons  with 
whom  he  maintained  some  sort  of  mystic  com- 
munion. .  .  ." 

One  of  the  men  who  accompanied  him  on  his  trip 
to  America  was  a  small  hardware  manufacturer  of 
Budapest,  one  Stephen  Fnedrich,  an  aggressive 
young  man  whose  vociferous  professions  of  undying 
enthusiasm  for  the  cause  of  democracy  could  not  be 
suppressed.  This  same  Friedrich  elbowed  himself, 
after  the  revolution  of  October,  1918,  into  the  berth 
of  Under-Secretary  of  War.  At  the  time  he  was 
leader  of  the  Jacobin  wing  of  the  Karolyi  party. 
This  same  Friedrich  became,  in  August,  1919,  the 
henchman  of  the  Archduke  Joseph,  organizer  of 
pogroms  and  patron  saint  of  the  White  Terror. 

When  Karolyi  returned  from  the  United  States 
he  met  a  friend  of  mine,  a  Hungarian  priest  who 
was,  and  still  is,  one  of  his  most  ardent  followers 
and  who  has  rendered  him  important  services. 
They  discussed  the  personalities  Karolyi  had  met 
among  American  Hungarians,  and  among  others 


COUNT  MICHAEL  KAROLYI        209 

the  Count  spoke  with  the  greatest  enthusiasm  of  a 
certain  journahst. 

"Oh,  X.  is  a  marvel"  said  Karolyi.  "If  I  ever 
should  want  to  erect  a  statue  to  Loyalty,  I  would 
use  his  likeness." 

Even  then  Mr.  X.  was  known  to  every  novice  of 
Hungarian  politics  as  a  most  dangerous  turncoat — 
a  man  of  undeniable  gifts  but  one  with  whom  trea- 
son was  a  livelihood  as  well  as  an  avocation,  who  not 
only  joined  old  causes  but  also  invented  new  ones 
so  he  could  betray  them — a  man,  moreover,  in  whose 
family  treachery  was  an  inherited  passion. 

"That  is  Karolyi,  all  over"  adds  my  friend  sadly. 

From  the  moment  when  he  first  entered  politics 
whole  hosts  of  retainers — journalists,  politicians, 
nondescript  quasi-intellectuals,  lived  on  him,  and 
lived  well. 

Some  of  his  friends  wishing  to  damn  him  with 
faint  praise  called  him  the  Pure  Fool  of  Hungary. 
If  he  be  that — the  accent  is  on  the  pure. 


14 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI 


211 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI 


There  are  two  ways  of  assaying  individual  suc- 
cess in  life.  One,  the  more  customary,  is  to  set  it 
against  the  failure  of  other  individuals,  to  measure 
its  height  from  the  sea  level  of  human  mediocrity. 
The  other,  the  more  true,  is  to  compare  it  with  in- 
dividual aspiration.  The  thing  that  really  counts 
is  not  what  a  man  has  become,  but  how  far  that 
which  he  has  become  falls  short  of  that  which  he 
had  set  out  to  be.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
adoring  flapper  in  a  concert  audience,  or  the  name- 
less young  pianist  squirming  in  a  callous  impre- 
sario's antechamber,  the  life  of  Ignace  Jan 
Paderewski  must  appear  as  an  unbroken  flight  up- 
ward, a  pyramid  of  triumphant  genius.  In  his  heart 
of  hearts  Paderewski  knows  that  his  was  a  life  of 
failure,  a  life  whose  external  brilliancy  merely 
deepens  the  shadow  of  the  internal  tragedy.  For 
the  supreme  failure  is  not  the  man  who  failed — for 
him  there  is  still  the  solace  of  misjudged  genius, 
the  indictment  of  an  uncomprehending  and  there- 
fore undeserving  world.     The  supreme  failure  is 

the  man  who  set  himself  a  fine  aim  and  achieved 

213 


214  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

something  else,  less  fine;  for  he  lost  out  with  Fate 
not  against  him,  but  on  his  side. 

Ignace  Jan  Paderewski  started  out  in  life  with 
two  great  visions.  He  saw  himself  as  a  great  com- 
poser. But,  being  a  Pole,  he  also  saw  himself  as  the 
saviour  of  Poland — every  young  Pole  of  his  cen- 
tury did.  In  his  case  the  two  visions  united  in  the 
dream  of  saving  Poland  by  his  music.  He 
ended  as  a  virtuoso  and  an  unsuccessful  prime 
minister. 

Mythology,  tireless  pursuer  of  the  great  and  the 
almost  great,  did  not  overlook  him.  When  an  in- 
fant— so  the  story  goes — he  clambered  on  the  piano 
of  his  father's  drawing  room  and  "produced  beauti- 
ful tones."  There  is  probably  an  old  teacher  alive 
somewhere,  or  an  old  peasant  from  his  father's 
Podolian  estate,  who  predicted  that  the  little  flaxen- 
haired  boy  with  the  clever  dark  eyes  would  some  day 
become  the  liberator  of  Poland.  Such  prophecies 
occur  in  every  bright  boy's  life.  Other  infants  have 
clambered  upon  pianos  and  produced  tones,  more 
or  less  beautiful;  but  the  prediction  is  not  recalled 
unless  borne  out  by  the  event. 

At  seventeen  Paderewski  was  touring  Poland 
and  Russia  as  a  pianist.  Once  he  was  asked  to  play 
at  the  house  of  a  Grand  Duke.  He  refused — he 
would  not  play  for  a  kinsman  of  that  Czar  whose 
gendarmes  had  dragged  his  father  away  from  him 
to  Siberia  when  he  was  only  three  years  old.  He 
was  a  recognized  artist,  at  least  within  the  parochial 
limits  set  by  the  broad  gauge  of  the  Imperial  Rail- 


IGNACE    JAN    PADEREWSKI 


IGNACE  JAN  PADERE\YSKI         215 

ways,  when  he  m  1884  came  to  Vienna  for  post- 
graduate instruction  under  Leschetitzky,  that  great 
miller  whose  mill  poured  forth  an  incessant  stream 
of  virtuosi.  But  Paderewski  disdained  virtuosity. 
He  wanted  to  express  himself  in  creation — even 
more  he  wanted  to  express  Poland,  her  greatness 
and  her  sorrow,  her  hopes  and  her  ultimate,  inevi- 
table triumph.  He  wanted  to  be  a  Chopin  who  was 
not  half  French  in  his  antecedents  and  three-quar- 
ters French  in  his  life. 

But  he  was  poor.  For  a  while  he  taught  for  star- 
vation wages  in  various  German  conservatories. 
And  he  wanted  money — a  good  deal,  and  he  set  out 
to  earn  it. 

Now  one  of  the  popular  fallacies  is  the  laboured 
contrast  between  an  artist's  and  a  philistine's  out- 
look on  money.  It  is  assumed  that  the  artist  ipso 
facto  despises  money  and  chooses  to  do  without  it, 
while  the  philistine  craves  it  and  works  for  it  shame- 
lessly. To  be  sure,  there  are  artists  and  phihstines 
who  live  up  to  this  generalization.  Yet  the  real  dif- 
ference between  the  two  is  not  in  the  importance 
that  each  attributes  to  money,  but  in  the  use  to 
which  each  puts  money  once  he  has  acquired  it.  The 
artist  has  a  clear-cut  notion  of  money's  value,  and, 
unless  he  be  an  ascetic  or  a  sentimentalist,  he  sets 
out  frankly  in  its  pursuit,  because  for  him  money 
means  a  road  to  higher  ends — it  means  indepen- 
dence. The  philistine,  having  no  higher  ends,  apolo- 
gizes for  his  own  lust  for  money,  all  the  while 
accumulating  it.    As  a  compensation  or  penance  he 


216  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

delights  in  sob  stories,  invented  by  underpaid  hire- 
lings, about  the  purity  and  bliss  of  poverty. 
"Blessed  are  the  poor" — that  saying  affords  a  great 
comfort  to  the  bourgeoisie.  It  rocks  its  conscience 
to  sleep. 

Young  Paderewski's  difficulty  was  the  old  diffi- 
culty of  the  slave  with  the  divine  spark  in  him.  In 
Renaissance  times,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  his 
case  would  have  been  taken  care  of  by  the  institu- 
tion of  the  aristocratic  patron.  In  the  nineteenth 
century  he  could  only  depend  on  himself. 

The  dilemma  confronting,  under  our  order  of 
society,  the  young  writer  was  defined  by  John 
Stuart  Mill  in  his  autobiography.  When  he  was 
eighteen  he  had  made  up  his  mind  that  he  was  go- 
ing to  devote  his  life  to  philosophy  and  literature ; 
but  he  had  to  earn  a  living.  He  could  solve  his 
problem  either  by  becoming  a  journalist — which 
meant  making  a  livelihood  out  of  the  things  he  was 
interested  in — or  else  by  entering  a  government  of- 
fice at  a  fixed  and  secure,  though  small,  salary,  with 
short  hours  and  more  or  less  routine  work — a  live- 
lihood very  far  removed,  indeed,  from  his  real  life's 
work,  but  one  which  would  leave  him  plenty  of  time 
and  energy  for  his  avocation.  With  characteristic 
maturity  of  judgment  young  Mill  chose  the  second 
alternative,  realizing  that  by  trying  to  combine  the 
pursuit  of  his  higher  aims  with  the  winning  of  his 
daily  bread  he  would  only  compromise  the  former. 
The  event,  as  everybody  knows,  amply  justified  his 
choice.     His  case  affords  an  object-lesson  to  the 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI         217 

young  intellectual  who  chooses  journalism  as  a 
jumping-off  board  only  to  realize,  in  most  instances 
when  it's  too  late,  that  he  chose  a  cul-de-sac. 

Even  more  difficult  is  the  case  of  the  young 
musician;  because  for  him  that  technical  prowess 
which  is  indispensable  to  his  success  depends  en- 
tirely on  constant  tireless  practice.  A  writer  may 
earn  his  bread  and  butter  by  sitting  six  or  eight 
hours  a  day  at  an  office  desk  and  then  may  forget 
about  it  and  create  a  masterpiece  in  the  evening — 
the  thing  can  be  done,  though  it  is  not  easy. 
But  a  musician,  working  in  the  most  abstract, 
least  easily  tractable  medium,  one  which  postu- 
lates a  tremendous  physical  pliancy  and  exacti- 
tude, becomes  a  slave  to  his  technique.  Many 
a  musician  has  been  lost  between  the  Scylla 
of  technical  inadequacy  and  the  Charybdis  of 
virtuosity. 

Young  Paderewski's  craving  for  money  was  not 
only  respectable  in  the  bourgeois  sense — it  was 
creditable  from  the  artistic  point  of  view.  It  showed, 
not  that  he  was  less  of  an  artist,  but  that  he  was  no 
fool.  He  had  an  intelligent  artist's  clear  and  honest 
conception  of  the  importance  of  money.  Money 
meant  independence.  Independence  meant  possi- 
bility of  creative  work. 

With  a  healthy  contempt  for  mere  virtuosit3% 
Paderewski  set  out  to  be  a  virtuoso  in  order  to  earn 
money  and  independence,  and  then  to  turn  to  crea- 
tion. His  success  was  overwhelming — no  one  was 
more  overwhehned  than  himself.    He  was  called  the 


218  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

greatest  pianist  of  his  generation;  he  certainly  be- 
came the  richest. 


II 


He  had  to  wait  for  his  turn,  but  at  last  it  came. 
In  1888  he  gave  his  first  concert  at  Paris.  The  hall 
was  not  quite  filled,  and  the  affair  came  near  to  be- 
ing a  failure.  At  least  so  Paderewski  thought  when 
he  left  the  platform  that  evening.  But  his  fate  was 
present  among  the  rows  of  that  scant  audience.  Its 
messengers  were  two  great  conductors,  Colonne  and 
Lamoureux.  They  heard  the  young  Pole  with  the 
oriflamme  around  his  head,  and  they  exchanged 
glances.  "Chopin  has  arisen"  said  one  to  the  other. 
"A  genius."  That  evening  the  great  change  came, 
the  great  event  which  is  the  dream  of  every  young 
artist.  Paderewski  was  discovered.  His  success 
on  the  platform  was  doubled  and  supported  by  his 
success  in  society.  He  was  very  handsome,  and, 
unlike  many  of  his  colleagues,  he  had  flawless  man- 
ners. More  than  that:  he  had  the  grand  manner, 
and  he  had  an  exquisite  and  broad  culture.  He  be- 
came the  idol  of  Paris,  and  not  only  of  Paris.  From 
that  evening  back  in  1888  up  to  the  Great  War  his 
artist's  career  was  an  unbroken  line  of  successes. 
He  became  rich,  famous,  beloved,  envied. 

All  this  was  as  he  had  planned  and  dreamed.  He 
had  wanted  success  as  a  pianist  in  order  to  attain 
independence  and  to  become  a  composer.  Success 
now  was  assuredly  here;  but  where  was  the  com- 


IGNACE  JAN  PADERE^YSKI         219 

poser?  He  had  composed  things — a  concerto  for 
the  pianoforte,  a  symphony, — they  were  performed, 
pohtely  reviewed  and  poHtely  forgotten.  As  a  com- 
poser he  never  even  achieved  the  third-rate  glory  of 
a  Rachmaninoff.  He  wrote  an  opera,  "Manru" — 
to  the  hbretto  of  Alfred  Nossig,  a  Teutonic  melo- 
drama with  gipsies,  mountain  lakes,  sorcerers,  pine 
forests,  curses  and  philters  and  murders — the  sort 
of  thing  that  does  not  go  in  the  movies  any  more. 
It  was  produced  for  the  first  time  in  1901  at  Dres- 
den and  then  at  Paris;  the  reviewers  said  it  was 
a  fine  piece  of  work,  and  then  hurried  to  assure  that 
Mr.  Paderewski  was  a  very  great  pianist  indeed. 
"Manru"  was  forgotten,  just  as  the  symphony  and 
the  concerto  had  been  forgotten.  Not  long  ago  I 
asked  for  the  book  of  "Manru"  at  the  New  York 
Public  Library.  "Manru — Manru"  said  the  kindly 
old  music  librarian  who  makes  a  point  of  knowing 
every  item  of  his  collection  by  heart.  "It's  Pade- 
rewski's  opera,"  I  explained.  "Goodness,  you  are 
the  first  person  ever  to  ask  for  it,"  said  the  librarian, 
shaking  his  head  doubtfully. 

His  opera  was  performed,  more  or  less,  by  cour- 
tesy, but  his  Minuet  is,  as  one  musical  review  put  it, 
one  of  the  five  most  popular  pieces  ever  written. 
It  took  him  twenty  minutes  to  do  it,  and  it  is  a 
charming  little  piece,  no  doubt.  Ask  anybody  about 
Paderewski  the  composer,  and  the  reaction  will  be, 
instantaneously:  The  Minuet.  Fancy  Beethoven 
being  remembered  as  the  man  who  composed  An 
Elise! 


220     EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

III 

Some  one  ought  to  write  a  book  on  nationality  as 
it  affects  the  character  and  the  fortunes  of  an  author 
or  artist.  The  terrible  limitation  that  nationality 
can  be  is  not  at  all  evident  to  a  Frenchman,  English- 
man, German  or  even  Italian,  whose  national  cul- 
tures are  little  self-sufficient  universes  and  who  find 
within  those  universes  their  material,  method,  emo- 
tional satisfaction  and  external  reward. 

A  young  American  of  the  self-conscious,  aware 
variety  will  understand  better  what  I  mean — he 
will  realize  the  burden  of  his  own  Puritan,  frontiers- 
man and  utilitarian  antecedents.  The  idea  must  be 
still  clearer  to  a  Dane  or  Dutchman  who  has  to  for- 
get his  own  language  the  moment  the  train  crosses 
the  frontier  of  his  country.  But  the  classic  cases 
of  nationality  as  a  handicap  are  those  of  the  op- 
pressed and  persecuted  races — above  all,  those  of 
the  Irishman,  the  Jew  and  the  Pole.  These  three 
can  never  live  down  their  nationality.  It  stares  at 
them  from  every  nook,  shouts  at  them  from  every 
housetop,  mocks  them  from  behind  every  turning. 
The  Irishman,  the  Jew  and  the  Pole,  each  lives  his 
whole  life  confined  to  a  closet  that  has  nationality 
as  a  skeleton  in  it. 

Of  the  three  the  Pole  is  the  most  tragic;  for  the 
Irishman  is  saved  by  his  wit  and  humour  and 
rationalistic  type  of  mind,  and,  not  the  least,  by  his 
English  language ;  the  Jew  is  saved  by  his  adapta- 
bility, his  self-criticism  and  his  internationalism ;  but 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI         221 

there  is  nothing  to  save  the  Pole,  archetype  of 
pathological  nationalism.  Moreover,  he  does  not 
want  to  be  saved;  like  many  neurotics,  he  seeks 
refuge  in  his  affliction.  He  is  an  incurable  ro- 
manticist. He  is  willing  to  face  death  for  his 
country ;  but  he  is  not  willing  to  face  a  fact  for  his 
country.  Self-delusion  is  the  great  national  vice  of 
the  Pole ;  it  is  also  the  cement  of  his  nationality — the 
moment  he  gets  disabused  from  his  dreams  he  is  apt 
to  become  an  alien  in  his  own  country. 

Somebody  has  said  that  the  Poles,  as  a  nation, 
suffer  from  a  redeemer-complex.  Intensely  Catho- 
lic, the  Pole  merges  in  his  adoration  of  his  country 
the  legend  of  the  crucifixion  with  the  worship  of 
the  Holy  Virgin.  Poland  is  the  Virgin,  the 
Dolorous  Mother;  but  she,  crucified,  is  also  to  re- 
deem the  world  in  her  blood.  But  this  national 
redeemer-fantasy  is  duplicated  in  the  individual 
Pole  by  a  personal  dream  of  salvation.  The  Pole 
believes  that  Poland,  of  all  nations,  is  marked  off 
to  save  Humanity,  and  that  he  himself,  of  all  men, 
is  marked  off  to  save  Poland. 

During  the  century  of  his  bondage,  from  1815  to 
1915,  the  Pole  throve  on  the  legend  of  his  country's 
martyrdom.  Poland,  pure,  innocent,  magnanimous, 
the  land  of  the  free  and  the  brave,  the  sanctuary 
of  all  liberty  and  virtue,  was  wantonly  attacked, 
raped,  outraged,  torn  to  pieces,  and  oppressed  by 
her  rapacious,  wicked  neighbours.  The  story  of 
Poland  and  her  enemies  was  part  of  the  eternal 
struggle  of  good  and  evil,  of  light  and  darkness,  of 


222  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

right  and  might.  But  "Poland  was  not  yet  lost": 
in  the  end  she  was  to  rise  from  her  dead  and  triumph 
over  her  enemies,  as  sure  as  the  powers  of  Heaven 
were  to  prevail  over  the  hosts  of  Hell. 

Alas! — the  findings  of  history  tear  this  myth  of 
Poland  to  shreds.  For  centuries  her  annals  re- 
corded nothing  but  incessant  fratricidal  warfare  of 
her  kings  with  rival  kings,  of  king  against  nobility, 
confederation  against  confederation,  noble  against 
noble,  nobility  against  gentry.  In  no  country  were 
burgesses  subjected  to  worse  oppression  or  had 
serfs  to  suffer  worse  exploitation  and  maltreatment ; 
in  no  country  led  the  nobility  a  more  wanton  life  of 
private  luxury  and  held  the  purse-strings  more 
tightly  where  public  needs  were  concerned.  Though 
outwardly  still  great  and  powerful,  Poland  was  in 
the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  already  a 
moribund  state;  the  terrible  rising  of  serfs  under 
Chmielnicki,  in  1648,  provoked  by  the  unspeakable 
cruelties  of  the  nobles  and  avenged  by  them  with 
horrors  still  worse,  was  the  beginning  of  an  end  that 
lasted  another  hundred  and  fifty  years.  From  a 
great  and  glorious  past,  says  Bain,  the  greatest 
English  authority  on  Poland,  the  Polish  republic 
decayed,  by  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  into 
"a  nuisance  to  her  neighbours  and  an  obstacle  to 
the  development  of  her  own  people."  The  Polish 
nation  "had  fallen  by  the  justest  retribution  that 
was  ever  meted  out  to  a  foreign  policy  of  incessant 
aggression  and  an  oppressive  and  barbarous  domes- 
tic rule,"  said  Lord  Salisbury. 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI         223 

The  Poles  are  a  baffling  race  [writes  Ralph  Butler,  an- 
other English  student  of  Polish  affairs].  In  all  Europe 
there  is  no  people,  with  the  possible  exception  of  the  French, 
which  is  naturally  so  gifted.  No  one  can  study  Eastern 
Europe  without  feeling  that  they  are  infinitely  the  most 
attractive  of  the  peoples  with  which  he  has  to  do.  .  .  . 
Their  culture  is  not  borrowed;  it  is  original  and  creative,  the 
true  expression  of  their  national  genius  and  their  historic 
tradition.  Yet  in  the  political  sphere  their  genius  is  unfruit- 
ful. They  are  of  those  artists  who  produce  nothing.  Their 
conceptions  are  brilliant,  but  they  have  no  technique,  and  do 
not  see  the  need  of  it ;  and  they  never  finish  their  work.  Their 
political  capacity  is,  as  it  were,  negative.  .  .  .  Lack  of 
positive  qualities,  of  discipline  on  the  one  hand  and  of 
moderation  on  the  other,  brought  them  to  their  fate  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  .  .  .  Faction  ruined  Poland.  Faction 
was  the  case  of  the  partitions.  Faction  made  a  failure  of 
the  two  insurrections  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

In  1914  Paderewski,  wealthy,  successful,  and, 
for  all  the  world  knew,  happy,  was  living  in  his 
idylhc  retreat  near  Morges,  in  Switzerland,  on  Lake 
Leman.  He  had  a  large,  comfortable  dwelling  for 
a  home  (he  had  originally  wanted  to  purchase  some 
picturesque  medieval  chateau,  but  his  wife  preferred 
plumbing  to  romance,  and  her  counsel  prevailed). 
He  had  an  orchard ;  he  kept  bees ;  he  was  interested 
in  fancy  poultry.  There  were  seven  pianos  in  the 
house,  and  among  other  objects  of  art  several  can- 
vases by  Fragonard,  his  favourite  old  master.  He 
had  exquisite  wines  in  his  cellar,  and  visitors  carried 
the  fame  of  his  cuisine  to  the  farthest  corner  of  that 
world  in  which  such  things  as  cuisine  are  discussed. 


224  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

When  the  war  broke  out  Poles  all  over  the  world 
were  gripped  by  a  feverish  hope :  the  hour  for  whose 
advent  they  had  prayed  for  a  century  struck  at  last ! 
They  did  not  exactly  know  in  what  way  and  by  what 
means  the  war  was  to  bring  about  the  deliverance  of 
Poland;  the  tendency  toward  a  clear  definition  of 
ways  and  means  was  never  a  Polish  quality.  But 
a  certain  confused  tenacity  of  purpose  was  ever 
since  1815  a  very  Polish  quality,  and  from  August 
1,  1914,  Polish  patriots  held  themselves  ready  for 
the  long-awaited  emergency. 

In  1915  Paderewski  started  at  Geneva,  with 
Sienkiewicz,  the  novelist,  the  Polish  Relief  Fund. 
It  was  a  great  success,  and  in  that  success  the  lion's 
share  was  due  to  Paderewski,  his  tireless,  self-sac- 
rificing industry,  his  organizing  ability,  his  tremen- 
dous prestige.  He  contributed  his  money,  his  time, 
his  art,  his  sleep,  his  health  to  the  cause.  Then  he 
came  to  America. 

The  four  million  American  Poles  were  the  great- 
est single  asset  in  the  struggle  for  Polish  restoration 
that  had  now  definitely  begun.  They  had  numbers ; 
they  had  money;  they  had  an  excellent  framework 
of  organization.  But  the  ancient  curse  had  pursued 
them  across  the  ocean:  they  were  torn  by  factions. 
"Two  Poles  and  a  sofa  make  a  political  party"  says 
the  malicious  but  truthful  proverb.  Among  Ameri- 
can Poles  the  pro-Ally  orientation  which  saw  in 
Prussia  the  most  dangerous  obstacle  to  Polish 
independence  fought  tooth  and  nail  the  pro-Aus- 
trian orientation  which,  while  far  from  loving  the 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI         225 

Germans,  regarded  Russia  as  the  arch  enemy.  The 
latter  school  was,  all  things  told,  justified  by  the 
past;  the  former  was  to  be  borne  out  by  the  future. 
In  the  meantime  both  great  parties  were  rent 
asunder  by  a  multiphcity  of  petty  factions,  personal 
rivalries,  parochial  jealousies;  their  often  uncoordi- 
nated, clashing  efforts  neutralized  one  another. 
There  was  one  man,  and  one  only,  who  could  bring 
order  and  unity  into  this  chaos:  the  greatest  living 
Pole,  Paderewski.  He  crossed  the  Atlantic,  and 
although  he  failed  to  restore  complete  unity  ( after 
all,  Poles  were  Poles),  his  tremendous  prestige  and 
his  tireless  work  secured  ascendency  to  the  pro- 
Ally  group,  managed  from  Paris  by  an  extremely 
able  politician,  Roman  Dmowski,  former  member 
of  the  Russian  Duma,  a  junker  of  junkers  and 
diplomat  of  diplomats. 

IV 

Paderewski's  arrival  in  America  virtually  marked 
the  end  of  his  career  as  an  artist,  and  the  beginning 
of  his  career  as  a  statesman.  He  gave  several  con- 
certs for  the  benefit  of  his  relief  fund;  but  his  art 
was  now  a  mere  subsidiary  of  his  political  aims, 
until  he  gave  up  the  piano  altogether.  But  his  pres- 
tige as  an  artist,  while  his  principal  asset,  implied 
also  a  grave  handicap.  Americans  may  worship  an 
artist — a  successful  one,  that  is,  as  measured  by 
standards  of  external  success — but  it  is  very  diffi- 
cult for  them  to  take  an  artist  seriously. 

In  any  country  the  pianist  turned,  overnight, 
15 


226  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

politician  would  have  met  with  a  kind  of  polite 
diffidence,  amused  expectancy.  In  America,  where 
a  pioneer  community  attached  a  slighting  connota- 
tion to  the  very  word  "artist"  as  something  effemi- 
nate and  being  per  se  in  the  way  of  a  joke,  Pade- 
rewski's  position  would  have  been  untenable  but  for 
the  general  fermentation  of  minds,  the  popular 
acquiescence  in  new  unheard-of  makeshifts  brought 
about  by  the  war.  In  an  age  of  portents  Pade- 
rewski's  metamorphosis  slipped  by  the  established 
notions  of  Main  Street.  But  it  did  not  slip  by  alto- 
gether unobserved.  We  have  an  excellent  record  of 
a  more  or  less  general  view  of  Paderewski's  trans- 
formation in  a  chapter  of  Mr.  Robert  Lansing's 
book  "The  Big  Four  and  Others  at  the  Peace  Con- 
ference." The  document  is  important  both  because 
it  furnishes  a  vivid  picture  of  Paderewski  the  fighter 
and  diplomat  and  because  it  sheds  a  ray  of  light  on 
the  mind  of  America's  Foreign  Minister  in  the  most 
fateful  period  of  her  history. 

Mr.  Lansing  tells  us  that  his  first  impression  of 
Paderewski  the  statesman,  gained  when  the  latter 
visited  him  repeatedly  at  Washington  during  the 
war,  was  rather  unfavourable,  because  Paderewski 
was  a  great  pianist,  "the  greatest,  indeed,  of  his 
generation,"  Mr.  Lansing  believed,  and  yet  this 
pianist  engaged  in  politics,  which  was  none  of  his 
damned  business. 

"I  felt  that  his  artistic  temperament,  his  passionate  devo- 
tion to  music,  his  intense  emotions,  and  his  reputed  eccentrici- 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI         227 

ties  indicated  a  lack  of  the  qualities  of  mind  which  made  it 
[Mr.  Lansing  means  to  say,  'would  have  made  it']  possible 
for  him  to  deal  with  the  intricate  political  problems" 

on  whose  solution  hinged  the  fate  of  indepen- 
dent Poland.  Mr.  Lansing  could  not  avoid  "the 
thought  that  his  emotions  were  leading  him  into  a 
path  which  he  was  wholly  unsuited  to  follow." 

To  be  sure,  no  such  misgivings  worried  Mr.  Lan- 
sing, at  that  moment,  as  to  the  emotional  fitness  of 
Mr.  Wilson  for  the  part  he  had  assumed.  But  then, 
Paderewski's  exterior  was  against  him. 

"With  his  long  flaxen  hair,  sprinkled  with  gray  and  brushed 
back  like  a  mane  from  his  broad  white  forehead,  with  his 
extremely  low  collar  and  dangling  black  necktie  accentuating 
the  length  of  his  neck,  with  his  peculiarly  narrow  eyes  and 
his    small   moustache    and    goatee    that    looked    so    foreign" 

Paderewski  appeared  to  this  statesman  of  Main 
Street  everything  that  a  politician  should  not  be, 
a  man  "absorbed  in  the  jesthetic  things  of  life 
rather  than  in  practical  world  politics." 

Later  developments  showed  that  gentlemen  who 
wore  no  goatees  and  who  had  nothing  to  do  whatso- 
ever with  the  "aesthetic  things  of  life"  were  quite 
capable  of  making  a  frightful  mess  of  practical 
world  politics;  but  at  this  particular  juncture 
Mr.  Lansing  could  still  afford  that  pleasant  sense 
of  superiority  which  made  him  feel  that  in  deal- 
ing with  Paderewski  he  had  to  deal  with  "one  given 
over   to   extravagant   ideals,   to   the   visions   and 


228  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

fantasies  of  a  person  controlled  by  his  emotional 
impulses  rather  than  by  his  reason  and  the  actuali- 
ties of  life."  He  could  not  help  thinking  that 
Paderewski  lived  "in  a  realm  of  musical  harmonies 
and  that  he  could  not  come  down  to  material  things 
and  grapple  with  the  hard  facts  of  life." 

All  of  which,  of  course,  was  the  typical  Anglo- 
Saxon  prejudice  against  a  man  who  wore  an  ex- 
tremely low  collar  with  dangling  black  necktie  and 
was  interested  in  "the  aesthetic  things  of  life."  It 
did  not  occur  to  Mr.  Lansing,  as  yet,  that  it  was 
quite  as  dangerous  for  a  statesman  to  live  in  a  realm 
of  legal  abstractions  as  in  one  of  musical  harmonies. 
However,  don't  let  us  digress. 

This  first  impression  that  Mr.  Lansing  had  con- 
ceived of  Paderewski  was  superseded  by  an  entirely 
different  one  at  Paris.  His  second  impression,  in- 
deed, Mr.  Lansing  avers,  was  rather  in  the  nature 
of  a  conviction,  and  a  conviction  that  he  still  holds 
— or  held,  at  any  rate,  at  the  time  of  writing  his 
book.  It  was  to  the  effect  that  Paderewski  was  "a 
greater  statesman  than  he  was  a  musician,"  and  that 
his  emotional  temperament  never  controlled  the 
soundness  of  his  reasoning  power.  Mr.  Lansing  at 
Paris  extols  just  those  qualities  in  Paderewski 
whose  lack  alarmed  him  so  at  Washington:  his 
poise  of  character,  his  conservative  judgment,  his 
calm  and  unexcitable  manner  at  the  table  of  dis- 
cussion. 

This  change  of  opinion  is  an  excellent  illustration 
of  the  typical  American  unfitness  to  deal  with  in- 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI         229 

tricate  European  character  and  background.  What 
Mr.  Lansing  distrusted  in  Washington  were  the  ex- 
ternal attributes  of  the  artist  and  foreigner.  In 
Paris  the  amenities  of  intimate  contact  prompted 
him  to  improve  his  opinion,  and  he  rushed  to  the 
opposite  extreme  with  a  characteristic  inelasticity 
that  admits  of  no  gradations,  with  that  American 
colour-blindness  which  knows  of  no  greys  and  yel- 
lows and  purples  and  greens,  but  which  conceives 
this  world  as  a  neatly  designed  pattern  of  blacks 
and  whites.  In  all  fairness  I  ought  to  add  that  if 
this  mental  stiffness  is  American,  so  are  the  gener- 
osity and  grace  which  hurry  to  acknowledge  a 
former  mistake. 

But,  alas! — such  was  Mr.  Lansing's  luck — no 
sooner  did  he  amend  his  first  impression  of  Pade- 
rewski  than  it  became  true.  It  was  his  first  impres- 
sion that  had  been  realistic,  even  though  its 
motivation  was  sentimental;  it  was  the  second  im- 
pression that  was  sentimental,  even  though  it  was 
disguised  by  matter-of-factness.  At  Paris  Mr. 
Lansing  thought  that  Paderewski  was  a  statesman 
and  not  a  mere  artist  because  he  refrained  from 
playing  sonatas  in  the  council  room.  But  observe: 
the  qualities  that  Mr.  Lansing  praises  at  Paris  are 
the  same  as  he  despises  at  Washington:  they  are  but 
different  aspects  and  names  of  Paderewski's  extra- 
ordinary suavity  of  temper  and  manner,  a  suavity 
that,  like  his  goatee,  was  so  foreign  to  the  American 
Philistine.  It  was  this  suavity  that  IMr.  Lansing 
at  last  came  to  mistake  for  statesmanship. 


230  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

What  wrought  the  change?  Mr.  Lansing  made 
the  strange  discovery  that  Paderewski  was  honest; 
that  he  told  the  truth.  An  unexpected  quahty,  in- 
deed, in  a  man  who  wears  long  hair  and  a  goatee! 
What  Mr.  Lansing  ignored  was  that  Paderewski 
was  a  Pole,  and  that  the  truth-telling  of  a  Pole  is 
more  unreal  than  the  lie  of,  say,  a  Frenchman.  Mr. 
Lansing  knew  nothing  of  Polish  history;  he  knew 
nothing  of  Polish  character. 

Even  JNIr.  Lansing  must  have  suspected  that 
there  was  something  wrong  with  some  of  Paderew- 
ski's  assertions,  for  he  took  occasion  to  emphasize 
that  if  the  latter  misstated  a  fact  he  did  so  not  by 
deliberate  purpose  but  owing  to  incomplete  knowl- 
edge of  or  erroneous  information  upon  the  subject. 
I  am  inclined  to  disagree  with  this  diagnosis,  not 
as  though  I  wanted  to  impugn  in  the  slightest  Mr. 
Paderewski's  good  faith — he  is  one  of  the  sincerest 
and  most  honest  of  men — but  because  I  know  that 
his  factual  knowledge  of  Polish  history  and  politics 
was  remarkable.  No,  where  Mr.  Paderewski  failed 
was  not  on  the  point  of  knowing  facts,  but  of  inter- 
preting them  and  setting  them  in  their  proper 
perspective. 

Once  in  the  mythical  age  before  the  Great  War 
Mr.  Paderewski  spoke  of  what  he  called  a  consti- 
tutional defect  common  to  all  Poles — arrhythmia, 
or  uneven  heartbeat,  which,  he  said,  causes  his 
countrj^men  to  live  in  a  perpetual  state  of  tempo 
riihato.  It  is  this  physiological  fact,  he  asserted, 
which  explains  Polish  moodiness,  Polish  unrest, 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI         231 

Polish  incapacity  of  steady  effort.  That  sounds 
convincing — one  may  discover  that  chronic  tempo 
ruhato  in  Chopin's  music,  in  Paderewski's  playing, 
in  the  prose  of  the  greatest  Pohsh  novehst,  Joseph 
Conrad — as  well  as  in  the  minutes  of  any  Polisli 
political  organization.  But  arrhythmia  is  not  the 
only  Polish  national  disease.  There  is  another  that 
affects  the  eyesight — a  peculiar  Polish  brand  of 
astigmatism  that  gives  Poles  a  pitifully  distorted 
view  of  themselves  and  their  history. 

In  1916  Paderewski  made  a  speech  at  Chicago  in 
behalf  of  his  Pohsh  relief  campaign.  He  dwelt  on 
the  historic  glory  of  Poland,  painted  in  glowing 
colours  her  greatness  and  her  suffering,  and  then 
spoke  of  the  liberal  reforms  of  Stanislaus  Ponia- 
towski,  the  last  Pohsh  king,  enacted  by  the  diet  of 
1791.  He  enumerated  the  measures  alleviating 
serfdom  and  preparing  for  its  final  abolition;  the 
enfranchisement  of  burgesses,  compulsory  popular 
education  under  a  system  of  state  schools,  the  equal- 
ity of  all  Polish  citizens  before  the  law,  the  introduc- 
tion of  hereditary  monarchy — a  most  necessary  and 
essentially  democratic  reform,  as  most  of  Poland's 
woes  had  been  due  to  the  oligarchic  rivalries  center- 
ing around  the  election  of  kings;  and  the  abolition 
of  the  greatest  curse  of  all,  the  liberum  veto.  Then 
he  referred  to  the  calumnies  spread  by  Poland's 
enemies,  and  wound  up :  "All  these  momentous  re- 
forms were  accomplished  without  revolution,  with- 
out bloodshed,  by  unanimous  vote,  in  a  quiet,  most 
dignified  way.    Does  it  prove  our  dissensions?  does 


232  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

it  prove  our  anarchy?  does  it  prove  our  inability  to 
govern  ourselves?" 

Alas  I  It  does  prove  all  that,  and  worse.  For 
there  were  just  three  trifling  details  concerning  the 
reforms  of  1791  that  Paderewski  failed  to  men- 
tion. First,  that  the  reforms  were  "put  over"  by 
the  king — an  intelligent  and  well-meaning  though 
weak  ruler,  far  exceeding  in  statesmanship  the 
oligarchy  which  fought  him — through  a  coup  d'etat 
in  the  face  of  a  fatuous  and  confused  opposi- 
tion. Second,  that  at  the  very  moment  when 
the  reform  was  enacted  Prussian,  Russian  and 
Austrian  armies  were  poised  to  jump  at  Poland's 
throat,  and  that  the  reform  itself  was  an  eleventh- 
hour  attempt  to  remedy  the  evils  which  had 
brought  about  the  partition.  Third,  that  within 
a  year  of  its  adoption  the  new  constitution  was 
abolished  by  a  coup  of  a  handful  of  Polish  magnates 
who  invoked  the  aid  of  Russia  to  deal  this  death 
blow  to  Polish  freedom. 

I  have  analyzed  this  sample  of  Paderewski's 
patriotic  eloquence  because  it  is  so  typically  PoHsh 
and  because  it  illuminates  the  ideology  which  he  and 
with  him  so  many  of  his  compatriots  brought  into 
play  in  their  attempt  to  solve  the  problems  of  their 
country.  Like  the  Bourbons,  the  Poles  had  learned 
nothing  and  forgotten  nothing.  But  this  time  they 
could  not  thwart  their  good  luck;  they  could  not 
arrest  a  drift  of  events  which,  by  destroying  both 
the  Prussian  and  the  Russian  empires,  automati- 
cally restored  Poland  to  independent  statehood. 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI         233 
V 

The  end  of  the  war  came,  and  Bismarck's 
prophecy  was  fulfilled.  The  White  Eagle  of 
Poland  was  soaring  high  again  on  the  day  when  the 
Black  Eagle  of  Prussia  was  smitten  dead.  Once 
more  there  was  a  government  at  Warsaw ;  once  more 
there  was  a  Polish  army.  Paderewski  went  to  Eng- 
land; there  he  boarded  a  British  cruiser  which  was 
to  take  him  to  Danzig.  When  he  went  on  board  the 
sun  was  just  setting;  against  the  dark  red  waters 
the  body  of  the  cruiser,  covered  with  seagulls,  stood 
out  in  glaring  whiteness — the  national  colours  of 
Poland !  Paderewski's  eye  caught  the  name  of  the 
ship,  glittering  in  gilt  letters  on  her  bow:  "Con- 
cord."   A  good  omen,  said  Paderewski. 

He  arrived  at  Warsaw,  and  found  twenty  parties 
in  the  Diet,  an  Armageddon  of  factionalism,  of 
petty  personal  and  local  rivalries — in  a  word,  a 
truly  Polish  foregathering.  He  also  found  General 
Pilsudski  in  the  seat  of  supreme  power — a  man  at 
least  as  remarkable  as  himself,  with  a  career  typi- 
cally Polish  and  reminiscent  of  the  old  national 
heroes.  He  had  been  a  revolutionist  by  profession, 
had  been  sent  to  Siberia,  escaped,  lived  in  exile, 
formed  conspiracies.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  war 
he  organized  a  Pohsh  legion  to  fight  on  the  Austrian 
side  against  Russia — was  then  arrested  and  im- 
prisoned for  refusing  obedience  by  the  Germans. 
He  was  a  fine  romantic  type  of  soldier;  he  was  an 
astute  pohtician;  he  was  the  idol  of  the  army.  His 


234  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

rivalry  with  Paderewski  ended  by  a  compromise: 
he  was  made,  not  President,  but  merely  Chief  of 
State,  a  provisional  dignitary;  Paderewski  became 
his  first  Premier. 

It  cannot  be  my  aim  to  enter  here  on  a  detailed 
account  of  the  hopeless  muddle  of  Polish  politics 
which  for  the  next  year  was  the  scene  of  Paderew- 
ski's  activities.  He  endured  it  for  a  year — he  sacri- 
ficed the  last  remnants  of  his  wealth,  his  nervous 
energy,  his  hopes.  In  December,  1919,  he  resigned 
— every  word  of  his  uttered  since  breathes  disillu- 
sionment. He  had  sold  his  piano.  He  returned  to 
America  just  before  the  Polish  politicians  launched 
on  their  mad  adventure  against  Russia  that  ended 
when  the  French  General  Weygand  stopped  the 
armies  of  Trotzky  within  a  few  miles  of  Warsaw's 
gates. 


VI 


Paderewski  the  composer  gave  up  his  career  for 
Paderewski  the  pianist ;  Paderewski  the  pianist  sac- 
rificed his  art  for  Paderewski  the  politician;  Pade- 
rewski the  politician  gave  his  everything  for  his 
beloved  Poland,  including  his  dreams.  When 
the  politician  finished  Paderewski  had  nothing 
left. 

There  are  those  who  suspect  him  of  secret  selfish 
ambitions  and  who  regard  his  ultimate  downfall  as 
just  retribution  for  pride.  This  feeling  may  be  a 
reaction  to  the  cult  of  Paderewski,  the  sentimental 


IGNACE  JAN  PADEREWSKI         235 

hero-worship  which  was  fashionable  during  the  war 
in  certain  American  circles ;  it  may  be  a  reaction  to 
some  of  his  political  views,  which  in  their  lack  of 
moderation  and  historic  sense  were  not  at  all  indi- 
vidual, just  typically  Polish.  It  is  an  unfair  and 
unfounded  suspicion.  People  who  sit  in  judgment 
over  him  in  that  manner  miss  altogether  the  essen- 
tial fineness  of  his  character,  his  real  devotion  to  the 
cause,  his  very  palpable  sacrifices.  Again,  it  has 
been  suggested  that  the  motive  power  for  his  politi- 
cal career  was  furnished  by  his  wife.  His  second 
wife,  rather,  for  Paderewski  had  been  married  at 
eighteen  and  lost  his  girl-wife  at  nineteen — she  was 
survived  by  a  son  born  paralyzed,  who  lived  only  a 
few  years.  Much  later  Paderewski  married  for  a 
second  time,  a  Russian  woman  by  the  name  of 
Baronne  de  Rosen  and  who  had  been  the  wife  of  a 
violinist,  the  Count  Ladislas  Gorski.  The  second 
Mme.  Paderewska  contributed  to  his  career  as  a 
business  manager  and  publicity  expert.  She  was 
shrewd  and  ambitious.  Though  (or  because)  she 
did  not  know  much  about  Poland  she  sensed  un- 
limited possibilities.  Once  in  the  agitated  days  of 
1918  an  American  friend  of  mine  dined  in  their 
apartment  in  New  York.  They  were  a  party  of 
four,  with  Paderewski's  young  Polish  girl  secretary. 
A  salad  was  served :  Mme.  Paderewska,  drawn  out 
by  general  approbation,  avowed  authorship.  The 
secretary  grew  eloquent.  "This  salad  is  fit  to  be 
eaten  by  a  King — by  the  King  of  England"  she 
said.  Whereupon  Mme.  Paderewska,  with  the  quiet 


236  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

seriousness  of  a  matured  conviction:  "But  it  is  be- 
ing eaten  by  a  King — the  King  of  Poland." 

No,  Paderewski  did  not  become  King  of  Poland. 
At  the  age  of  sixty-two  he  lives  the  quiet  life  of  a 
retired  man  of  affairs  on  his  California  property  at 
Paso  Robles ;  his  flaming  hair  has  turned  grey,  and 
so  have  his  glowing  dreams.  He  has  but  one  hope 
left:  that  some  day  oil  will  be  struck  on  his  estate, 
and  then  he  will  become  rich  once  more — he  still 
wants  to  be  rich,  but  today,  as  in  the  gone-by  days 
of  his  youth,  he  wants  to  be  rich  only  in  order  to 
serve  an  ideal — he  wants  to  aid  his  beloved  Poland. 

For  Paderewski  is,  first  and  last,  in  what  he 
achieved  and  in  what  he  fell  short,  a  Pole,  son  of 
the  most  brilliant  and  most  futile  race  in  Christen- 
dom. By  hitting  a  mark  his  life  missed  its  aim;  his 
success  proved  more  barren  than  the  failure  of 
others;  for  a  moment  his  art  conquered  the  world, 
and  when  he  dies  he  will  be  remembered  by  a  minuet. 


EDWARD  BENES 


237 


EDWARD  BENES 


One  of  these  days  somebody  will  sit  down  and 
write  a  history  of  the  "ifs"  of  the  great  war.  Some 
of  the  larger  "ifs,"  to  be  sure,  have  been  threshed 
out  as,  for  instance,  "if  the  British  had  persevered 
at  Gallipoli  for  another  day  or  two";  "if  the  tank 
had  been  adopted  on  the  western  front  in  1916"; 
"if  Germany  had  refrained  from  suicide  by  sub- 
marine," etc.  But  there  was  a  number  of  less  ob- 
vious and  spectacular,  yet  in  their  smaller  way  no 
less  important,  "ifs"  which  have  hitherto  escaped 
public  notice.  For  the  encouragement  of  enter- 
prising young  historians,  the  following  "minor  if" 
is  herewith  submitted:  "If  on  a  certain  night  in 
August,  1915,  a  dog  had  barked  at  a  certain  spot 
on  the  Czech-Bavarian  frontier,  what  difference 
would  it  make  today  for  the  prospects  of  Central 
European  consolidation?" 

That,  to  say  the  least,  sounds  rather  mysterious. 
But  it  is  not  the  purpose  of  the  writer  to  build  up 
an  international  detective  story  around  the  fateful 
omission  of  an  unsuspecting  Austrian  dog  wliich,  to 
tell  the  truth,  may  never  have  existed  at  all.    The 

239 


240  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

suspense  of  the  reader  will  be  cut  short  instantly. 
Had  the  supposititious  canine  barked  on  that  par- 
ticular August  night  in  the  locality  in  question, 
the  suspicions  of  the  Austrian  sentry  guarding  the 
frontier  might  have  been  aroused;  he  might  have 
investigated  and  alarmed  his  colleagues.  But  the 
dog — if  there  was  one — failed  to  bark;  the  sentry 
remained  undisturbed  as  he  stood  there,  leaning  on 
his  rifle  and  dreaming  of  a  bowl  of  Szegediner 
goulash  or  spareribs  with  sauerkraut,  as  the  case 
might  be,  and  a  young  and  slender  professor  of 
sociology  could  continue  the  uncomfortable  and  un- 
dignified but  highly  timely  process  of  crawling  on 
his  knees  through  the  thick  underbrush  across  the 
Bavarian  frontier.  Presently  he  was  on  German 
soil — not  yet  in  safety,  but  the  worst  was  over — the 
road  to  Switzerland  was  open. 

Today  the  young  and  slender  professor  of 
sociology  who  had  the  good  fortune  of  not  being 
observed  in  the  course  of  his  somewhat  constrained 
progress  is  one  of  the  leading  statesmen  of  Europe 
and  the  world.  He  is  Dr.  Edward  Benes,  Prime 
Minister  of  the  Czechoslovak  Republic,  and  in  all 
likelihood  its  next  President,  master  mind  of  the 
Little  Entente,  one  of  the  engineers  of  the  Genoa 
Conference  and,  above  all,  one  of  the  four  or  five 
foremost  exponents  of  international  common  sense. 
By  many  authorities,  with  whom  the  writer  finds 
himself  in  accord,  he  is  regarded  as  the  greatest  and 
most  promising  practical  statesman  on  the  Euro- 
pean Continent  today. 


EDWARD    BCNCS 


EDWARD  BENES  241 

In  August,  1915,  the  young  professor  of  sociol- 
ogy had  very  excellent  reasons  to  choose  the  rather 
unusual  method,  above  described,  of  travelling 
from  Austria  to  Germany.  The  Austrian  Empire 
had  made  up  its  mind,  such  as  it  was,  to  destroy 
him.  There  was  some  justification  for  this  decision, 
as  Dr.  Benes,  on  his  part,  had  made  up  his  mind  to 
destroy  the  Austrian  Empire.  It  was  a  sort  of  race, 
with  the  odds  heavily  against  the  young  professor. 
From  August,  1914,  to  August,  1915,  only  an  ex- 
tremely innocent  life  insurance  company  would  have 
underwritten  his  policy.  But  he  eluded  his  enemies 
just  in  the  nick  of  time:  the  warrant  for  his  arrest 
had  been  signed.  Once  in  Bavaria,  where  nobody 
knew  him,  he  used  a  forged  passport.  Everything 
is  fair  in  war,  and  young  Dr.  Benes  was  at  war  with 
the  Austrian  Empire.  He  got  safely  into  Switzer- 
land, where  he  joined  another  professor,  also  a 
refugee — Thomas  Garrigue  Masaryk.  It  proved 
to  be  a  very  good  combination.  In  the  end 
the  two  between  them  destroyed  the  Austrian  Em- 
pire which  had  sought  to  destroy  them  and  their 
people. 

II 

The  eminent  American  historian,  the  late  George 
Louis  Beer,  called  Edward  Benes,  in  the  days  of 
the  Paris  conference,  the  greatest  of  the  younger 
statesmen  of  Europe.  The  antecedents  of  the  man 
who  earned  this  emphatic  epithet  from  such  a  con- 
servative authority  had  been  anything  but  brilliant. 

i6 


242  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Edward  Benes,  like  his  beloved  master  Masaryk, 
rose  to  a  leading  place  in  the  affairs  of  this  world 
from  and  through  the  darkest  poverty.  He  was 
born  in  1884,  one  of  five  children  of  a  Czech  peas- 
ant. Young  Benes  had  to  starve  his  way  through 
college.  Incidentally,  he  was,  unlike  many  great 
Europeans,  not  of  the  bookwormish,  pampered  kind 
of  teacher's  pet.  He  was  a  star  football  player — 
association  football  is  the  great  national  game  in 
Bohemia — a  confirmed  fighter,  on  the  whole,  the 
sort  of  chap  who  squeamish  European  pedagogues 
usually  predict  will  not  end  well.  At  the  same 
time  he  was  a  passionate  reader  of  serious  literature. 
Under  the  influence  of  his  brother  he  became  a 
Socialist.  His  chief  interest  was  philology.  His 
linguistic  achievements  were  useful  to  him  later, 
when,  as  Foreign  Minister  of  Czechoslovakia,  he 
could  discourse  at  the  Paris  Conference  with  equal 
ease  in  French  and  English.  He  could  have  added 
half  a  dozen  languages  had  there  been  a  call  for 
them. 

It  was  in  Prague  University  that  he,  like  many 
hundreds  of  his  contemporaries,  came  under  the 
spell  of  Professor  Masaryk.  The  latter 's  influence 
turned  him  from  philology  to  philosophy  and 
sociology.  In  1905  Benes  went  to  France  to  study 
in  the  Sorbonne  at  Paris  and  in  the  University  of 
Dijon.  His  stay  in  France  was  a  continuous  strug- 
gle for  a  miserable  living.  He  wrote  for  Czech 
newspapers  and  magazines  for  a  pittance,  and 
felt    bitterly    the    soul-crushing    handicap    which 


EDWARD  BENES  243 

poverty   imposes  on  a  man  bent  on   study  and 
thought. 

His  sojourn  in  France  had  an  extremely  impor- 
tant bearing  on  his  future.  He  became  imbued  with 
the  Western  spirit,  with  Western  pohtical,  economic 
and  cultural  ideals.  He  was,  of  course,  an  ardent 
Czech  nationalist ;  but  his  Westernism  meant  break- 
ing away  from  the  orthodox  school  of  Bohemian 
patriots  who  looked  for  the  spiritual  salvation  and 
political  deliverance  of  their  country  toward  Holy 
Russia.  The  Westernist  school,  of  which  IVIasaryk 
was  leader  and  Benes  now  became  a  faithful  fol- 
lower, professed,  on  the  other  hand,  that  a  thousand 
years  of  close  contact  with  Western  Christianity 
and  with  Latin  and  German  civilization  had  made 
the  Czechs  a  Western  nation.  Writes  Professor 
Robert  J.  Kerner : 

Benes  became  a  believer  in  the  West,  in  France,  in  the 
fact  that  Western  Europe  and  America,  not  Russia,  repre- 
sented progress.  He  became  filled  with  the  idea  that  his 
own  nation  must  learn  from  the  West  and  not  from  the 
East;  that  like  the  West  it  must  depend  on  realism — it 
must  know  how  to  do  things,  it  must  learn  to  observe,  to 
analyze,  to  contemplate,  sanely.  It  must  not  remain  romantic 
as  the  other  Slavs.* 

Europeanism  instead  of  Pan- Slavism  became  the 
watchword  of  the  Realist  school. 

•  "Two  Architects  of  New  Europe:  Masaryk  and  Denes."  By 
Robert  J.  Kerner,  Ph.D.  The  Journal  of  International  RelaUons, 
Vol.  12,  No.  1. 


244  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

In  1908  Benes  returned  home  and  became  in- 
structor in  sociology,  first  in  a  college  and  later  in 
the  university.  For  the  next  five  years  he  led  the 
quiet  life  of  a  scholar  and  author.  But  a  few  days 
after  the  outbreak  of  the  war  he  called  on  Masaryk 
with  a  memorandum  outlining  a  complete  plan  of  a 
Czechoslovak  war  for  liberation — first,  passive  re- 
sistance at  home  and  co-operation  with  the  Allies 
abroad,  culminating  in  revolution. 

Masaryk  went  abroad.  Benes  stayed  at  home  and 
organized  the  so-called  Czech  mafia,  an  under- 
ground society  which  furnished  detailed  and  ac- 
curate information  to  the  Allies  on  what  was  going 
on  in  Austria-Hungary  and  sabotaged  the  war 
efforts  of  the  Dual  Empire.  He  directed  this  work 
until  August,  1915,  when  he  got  wind  of  his  im- 
pending arrest  by  the  Austrian  police  and  escaped 
to  Switzerland  under  the  thrilling  conditions  re- 
ferred to  above. 


Ill 


Once  safely  abroad,  Benes  hurried  to  join 
Masaryk  and  became  the  latter's  chief  of  staff. 
They  organized,  first  at  Paris  and  then  in  London, 
in  Russia  and  in  the  United  States,  the  Czecho- 
slovak National  Council,  which  became  the  prin- 
cipal organ  of  the  struggle  against  the  Hapsburgs. 

The  importance  of  the  anti-Austrian  political 
offensive  conducted  during  the  war  by  Masaryk, 
Benes  and  their  English  and  French  associates  is 


EDWARD  BENES  245 

not  sufficiently  realized.  Of  that  campaign  tlie 
English  weekly  review,  The  New  Europe,  was  tlic 
chief  mouthpiece ;  Prof essor  Masaryk  was  the  spirit 
and  the  soul,  and  Professor  Benes  the  directing 
brain.  It  was  perhaps  the  most  brilliantly  conceived 
and  executed  pohtical  movement  in  modern  history. 
Its  ultimate  idea  was  this:  that  there  could  be  no 
peace  and  uninterrupted  progress  in  P^uropc  as 
long  as  the  political  map  was  not  brought  in  ac- 
cord with  the  natural  map — in  other  words,  as 
long  as  eighty  million  people,  from  the  Baltic  to 
the  Aegean,  lived  under  alien  domination  fastened 
upon  them  by  the  Congresses  of  Vienna  and 
Berlin. 

Masaryk  and  his  followers  realized  that  satisfied 
nationalism  was  the  means  and  the  stepping  stone 
toward  achieving  that  economic  and  cultural, 
though  not  in  the  narrow  sense  political,  interna- 
tionalism which  alone  could  put  an  end  to  war. 
Some  of  their  followers,  as  was  only  natural  in  the 
heat  of  the  struggle,  elevated  the  means  into  an  end, 
the  stepping  stone  into  an  ideal.  These  extremists 
contended  that  once  the  aspirations  of  nationality 
were  fulfilled  people  could  sit  down  and  clip  the 
coupons  of  the  millennium.  This  idle  dream  bene- 
fited only  those  who  for  one  reason  or  another  de- 
plored the  passing  of  the  Hapsburgs  and  all  that 
they  were  the  symbols  of.  These  reactionaries  ex- 
ploited the  after-war  chaos  as  an  argument  to  show 
that  Austria-Hungary  was,  all  things  considered,  a 
European  necessity.    Even  many  hberals,  fright- 


246  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

ened  by  the  drastic  first  effects  of  the  remedy,  joined 
in  shedding  tears  for  the  Hapsburgs. 

Men  like  Masaryk  and  Benes  knew  better.  They 
knew  that  the  destruction  of  Austria-Hungary  was 
not  a  solution,  merely  the  indispensable  preliminary 
to  a  solution.  They  acted  on  the  simple  common 
sense  proposition  that  if  you  have  one  site,  and  one 
only,  to  build  upon,  you  have  to  raze  the  old  ram- 
shackle firetrap  of  a  house  standing  there  before  you 
can  erect  your  up-to-date  structure.  They  had  a 
fully  articulate  program  of  construction  in  their 
pockets  all  the  while  they  were  going  about  demol- 
ishing the  old  nuisance.  It  was  the  program  of  a 
Europe  reformed  on  the  basis  of  national  equili- 
brium, political  democracy,  reorganization  of  pro- 
duction and  interstate  co-operation.  It  was  the 
programme,  largely,  put  forward  by  The  New 
Europe,  and  some  other  British  and  American 
periodicals. 

The  story  of  how  Masaryk,  Benes  and  their 
French  and  English  friends  organized  this  cam- 
paign ;  how  they  won  over,  gradually,  the  Western 
Governments  and  public  opinion  to  their  plan ;  how 
they  worked  for  a  united  military  command  and  for 
a  rear  attack  on  Austria  from  the  Balkans ;  how  they 
conducted  the  process  of  sabotage  and  "boring  from 
within"  in  Austria  itself;  how  they  organized  out 
of  refugees  and  exiles  three  armies,  one  each  in 
Russia,  France  and  Italy;  how  they  lined  up  the 
financial  and  moral  power  of  American  Czecho- 
slovaks; how,  finally,  they  achieved  recognition  of 


EDWARD  BENES  047 

the  Czechoslovak  people  as  one  of  the  allied  bel- 
ligerent nations,  and  of  the  Czechoslovak  National 
Council  as  a  belligerent  Government;  all  this  has 
been  told  and  retold  many  times.  Benes's  part  in 
these  transactions  was  second  only  to  that  of 
Masaryk  himself.  Masaryk  travelled — went  to 
Italy  and  England,  later  to  Russia  and  the  United 
States,  enlisting  with  the  marvellous  power  of  his 
personality  the  aid  of  Governments  and  peoples; 
while  Benes  remained  in  Paris  in  charge  of  the 
headquarters  of  the  National  Council,  directing  the 
tremendous  technical  work  of  the  organization. 

One  of  the  first  victories  won  by  Benes  at  Paris 
was  when  he  announced  to  the  Allied  governments 
that  within  twenty-four  hours  the  Skoda  plant  in 
Bohemia,  the  most  important  cannon  and  ammuni- 
tion works  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  Empire, 
would  be  blown  up.  He  was  met  with  polite 
doubts.  Next  day  brought  the  news  of  the  explo- 
sion. Thenceforth  the  Allied  leaders  treated  Benes 
with  courtesy  unqualified  by  scepticism. 

But  more  important  triumphs  were  to  follow. 

Through  Colonel  Stefanik's  friendship  with  Berthelot  of 
the  French  Foreign  Office,  [writes  Professor  Kcrntr,]  Benes 
negotiated  the  specific  mention  of  the  Czechoslovaks  in  the 
famous  Allied  Note  of  January,  1917,  in  which  the  Entente 
replied  to  President  Wilson  that,  among  other  war-aims,  they 
counted  as  one  "the  liberation  of  Italians,  Slavs,  Roumanians 
and  Czechoslovaks  from  foreign  rule."  This  was  the  first 
great  international  success  in  diplomacy  for  the  Czechoslo- 
vaks.    They  had  obtained  international  recognition. 


248  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

The  incident  of  the  Emperor  Charles's  letter, 
conveyed  to  President  Poincare  of  France  by 
Prince  Sixtus  of  Bourbon-Parma,  and  the  subse- 
quent strivings  of  certain  Allied  statesmen  to  detach 
Austria-Hungary  from  the  German  aUiance 
threatened,  for  a  while,  to  thwart  the  Czechoslovak 
campaign  of  hberation.  But  the  negotiations  led  to 
nothing. 

It  was  Benes's  task,  [continues  Dr.  Kerner]  to  point  out 
the  illusion  under  which  the  "separate-peace"  negotiations 
suffered.  Backed  by  the  achievements  of  the  Czechoslovak 
armies  in  France  and  in  Russia,  and  confident  of  the  inevi- 
table failure  of  the  "separate-peace"  plans,  Dr.  Benes  nego- 
tiated in  the  spring  and  summer  of  1918  perhaps  the  most 
notable  diplomatic  victory  of  the  whole  war.  He  obtained 
first  the  consent  of  Balfour,  British  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  and  Clemenceau,  Premier  of  France,  to  complete 
the  break-up  of  Austria  by  having  them  recognize  the  Czecho- 
slovaks an  allied  and  belligerent  nation.  It  was  for  that 
reason  that  the  French  publicist,  Fournol,  declared:  "Benes 
has  destroyed  Austria-Hungary," 

In  carrying  out  their  programme  and  obtaining 
Allied  sanction  for  its  various  Stapes  Masaryk 
and  Benes  had  to  combat  a  powerful  pro-Austrian 
clique  both  at  London  and  Paris.  Most  formidable, 
however,  among  the  opponents  of  the  Czechoslo- 
vak leaders  was  the  Italian  government,  which, 
under  the  direction  of  its  Foreign  Minister,  Baron 
Sonnino,  worked  with  all  its  might  against  the 
plans  of  the  Austrian  Slavs — both  Czechs  and 
Jugoslavs.    But  at  the  decisive  moment  Benes,  the 


EDWARD  BENES  249 

young  professor,  defeated  Sonnino,  the  veteran  di- 
plomatist, and  the  Czechoslovak  National  Council 
was  recognized  as  a  de  facto  belligerent. 


IV 


The  Austrian  debacle  in  October,  1918,  found 
Benes  fully  prepared  for  the  emergency.  Masaryk, 
elected  President  of  the  Republic  while  still  in  New 
York,  hurried  to  Prague.  Benes  was  appointed 
Foreign  Minister  in  the  first  Czechoslovak  Cabinet, 
and  in  that  quality  he  accompanied  Premier  Kra- 
mar  to  the  Paris  Conference. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  debaters  in  this  singular  par- 
liament, [writes  Dr.  Dillon*]  where  self-satisfied  ignorance 
and  dullness  of  apprehension  were  so  hard  to  pierce,  was  the 
youthful  envoy  of  the  Czechoslovaks,  M.  Benes.  ...  He 
would  begin  his  expose  by  detaching  himself  from  all  national 
interests  and  starting  from  general  assumptions  recognized 
by  the  Olympians,  and  would  lead  his  hearers  by  easy  stages 
to  the  conclusions  which  he  wished  them  to  draw  from  their 
own  premises.  And  two  of  them,  who  had  no  great  sympathy 
with  his  thesis,  assure  me  that  they  could  detect  no  logical 
flaw  in  his  argument.  Moderation  and  sincerit}'^  were  the 
virtues  which  he  was  most  eager  to  exhibit,  and  they  were 
unquestionably  the  best  trump  cards  he  could  play. 

Once  his  task  at  the  Peace  Conference  was  com- 
pleted, Benes  returned  home  to  assist  the  Presi- 
dent in  the  arduous  work  of  internal  organiza- 
tion.   They  worked  out  the  domestic  application  of 

*"The  Inside  Story  of  the  Peace  Conference." 


250  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

their  programme  so  well  that  today  Czechoslovakia 
is  a  compact  little  island  of  culture  and  prosperity 
amid  a  topsy-turvy  Central  Europe. 

But  important  as  his  contribution  to  the  remak- 
ing of  the  European  structure  had  been,  it  was  to 
be  surpassed  by  the  role  he  now  assumed  in  secur- 
ing and  developing  all  that  which  was  sound  in 
the  fruit  of  victory  and  in  pruning  away  its  ex- 
crescences. From  the  beginning,  Benes,  like  his 
chief,  Masaryk,  set  his  shoulder  against  the  spirit 
of  vindictive  nationalism,  which  would  merely  re- 
produce the  old  conditions  with  the  tables  turned 
on  the  old  oppressors.  Master  and  disciple  alike 
were  and  are  for  reconciliation  with  the  Germans. 

The  chief  danger  that  threatened  Czechoslovakia 
was  on  the  part  of  the  anachronistic  military  autoc- 
racy that  fastened  its  stranglehold  upon  Hungary. 
It  was  against  this  crazy  Magyar  revanche  and  ir- 
redentist ideology  that  Benes  devised  and  carried 
out  the  plan  of  the  Little  Entente,  aligning  Czecho- 
slovakia, Roumania  and  Jugoslavia  in  a  series  of 
commercial  and  military  agreements.  To  a  more 
limited  extent  Poland  and  Italy  also  have  entered 
this  arrangement  as  the  best  safeguard  of  peace. 
Although  the  principal  aim  of  the  combination  was 
to  prevent  Magyar  aggression  and  Hapsburg  res- 
toration, Benes  always  took  pains  to  emphasize  that 
the  Little  Entente  is  directed  against  no  nation  or 
people,  and  that  the  Magyars  were  welcome  to  join 
as  soon  as  they  adjusted  themselves  to  the  situa- 
tion.   The  former  enemy,  Austria,  had  already  been 


EDWARD  BENES  251 

included  in  the  scheme  through  the  negotiations  at 
Lana  Castle. 

Of  course,  aggressive  intentions  are  always  dis- 
claimed by  any  aUiance  of  States,  and  such  pro- 
testations need  not  be  taken  at  their  face  value. 
But  in  the  case  of  the  Little  Entente,  as  conceived 
by  Masaryk  and  Benes,  the  disclaimer  happens  to 
be  true.  Their  idea  is  to  develop  the  present  forma- 
tion into  a  system  of  general  European  co-opera- 
tion— a  League  of  Europe,  as  it  were,  imposed  not 
from  above  and  without,  but  developed  from  within. 
Some  well-meaning  people  in  America  scorn  the 
Little  Entente  as  a  mere  tool  of  French  militarism 
and  an  insurance  scheme  to  protect  territorial  loot. 
They  forget  that  but  for  the  Little  Entente  the 
military  terror  of  Horthy's  Hungary  would  have 
overrun  Central  Europe  long  ago,  and  the  Haps- 
burgs,  and  even  the  Wittelsbachs  of  Bavaria,  would 
be  restored  by  Magyar  armies.  They  also  forget 
that  the  influence  of  Benes  has  always  been  cast 
into  the  scales  in  favor  of  the  sane  reconstructionism 
of  British  and  Italian  liberals,  and  not  of  the  sabre- 
rattling  bitter-enders.  They  forget,  finally,  that 
Benes  was  the  first  Foreign  Minister  in  Europe 
to  advocate  a  dispassionate,  soberly  realistic  treat- 
ment of  the  Russian  question. 

As  a  first  measure  of  such  treatment  Benes 
means  resumption  of  trade  with  Russia.  He  con- 
cluded a  commercial  treaty  with  the  Soviet  Govern- 
ment, and  is  prepared  to  back  up  Czech  merchants 
who  want  to  do  business  with  credit  guarantees. 


252  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

He  defined  his  attitude  toward  Russia  in  conversa- 
tions with  Mr.  H.  N.  Brailsford,  the  British  pub- 
licist, early  in  the  summer  of  1922. 

Dr.  Benes  [writes  Mr.  Brailsford]  told  me  that  he  regards 
the  Bolsheviks  as  much  the  most  capable  among  the  Russian 
parties.  None  the  less,  he  refuses  to  believe  that  an  essen- 
tially aggressive  doctrine  can  be  combined  with  steady  recon- 
structive work,  and  he  bases  his  calculations  on  the  belief  that 
this  logical  incompatibility  (as  he  sees  it)  will  bring  about 
their  fall,  it  may  be  in  1  or  2  or  5  or  10  years.  In  the 
interval  he  is  ready  to  move  with  a  view  to  gaining  positions 
for  the  remoter  future. 

But  in  no  circumstances,  he  said  emphatically,  would  he 
grant  de  iure  recognition.  His  reason  for  that  refusal  is 
based  on  internal  politics.  It  would  be,  he  said  frankly,  too 
much  of  a  triumph  for  the  Czech  Communists.  He  did  not 
say  it,  but  it  may  also  be  in  his  mind,  that  it  would  strain 
the  rather  close  relations  which  bind  the  present  leaders  of 
the  Czech  state  to  the  Russian  Social  Revolutionary  party. 
The  attitude,  in  its  shrewd  realism,  is  typical  of  Czech  policy. 

Among  the  most  notable  achievements  of  Benes, 
the  diplomat,  was  the  settlement  of  the  Czech- 
Polish  controversy  over  Teschen,  which  not  only 
averted  armed  conflict  between  the  two  Slavonic 
sister  nations,  but  actually  linked  Poland  as  a  semi- 
official member  of  the  Little  Entente.  Benes's 
share  in  bringing  about  the  Genoa  conference  is 
also  remembered:  it  was  he  who  smoothed  out  the 
apparently  irreconcilable  disagreements  between 
Messrs.  Lloyd  George  and  Poincare.  That  in  the 
end  the  Genoa  foregathering  was  relegated  to  the 
limbo  of  missed  opportunities  is  not  Benes's  fault. 


EDWARD  BENES  iS$ 

Today  Edward  Benes  is  barely  38  years  of  age, 
the  youngest  Prime  Minister  of  Europe,  and  pros- 
pective President  of  his  country.  His  possibilities 
are  practically  unlimited;  his  determination  to  ex- 
ploit them  for  the  common  European  weal  is 
doubted  by  none.  One  does  not  have  to  exaggerate 
the  importance  of  personality  as  a  directive  force 
in  history  in  order  to  maintain  that  it  was  Europe's 
good  luck  that  nothing  interrupted  the  doze  of  an 
Austrian  sentry  on  a  dark  August  night  seven  years 
ago,  somewhere  on  the  western  frontier  of  Bohemia. 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY 


255 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY 


He  is  a  handsome  man,  this  Hungarian  admiral, 
and  he  knows  it.  He  is  also  a  practical  person, 
and  he  knows  how  to  exploit  his  impressive  appear- 
ance as  a  political  asset.  British  and  American 
correspondents  who  have  interviewed  him  since  his 
accession  to  power  in  November,  1919,  rarely  fail 
to  note  the  resemblance  he  bears  to  Admiral  Beatty. 
To  be  sure,  that  resemblance  increases  in  reverse 
ratio  with  the  square  of  the  correspondent's  famil- 
iarity with  the  Hero  of  Heligoland;  it  is  more  ap- 
parent to  Americans  than  to  Englishmen ;  it  is  more 
apparent  after  dinner  than  before.  The  cuisine  of 
the  royal  castle  at  Budapest  is  excellent,  and  its 
wine  cellar  is  famous.  But,  whether  or  not  the 
likeness  be  real,  the  myth  that  has  grown  up  around 
it  is  a  very  real  item  on  the  credit  side  of  Horthy's 
balance  sheet.  In  strange  lands,  after  all,  anything 
that  reminds  of  home,  however  slightly,  is  a  source 
of  comfort;  and  to  bewildered  Anglo-Saxon  re- 
porters, thrown  by  fate  into  a  country  whose  psy- 
chology they  understand  as  little  as  its  language, 
the  tilt  of  Admiral  Horthy's  cap  affords  one  of 

17  257 


258  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

the  few  links  with  known  reality.  The  cap  is  the 
cap  of  Beatty;  whose  head  the  head  be  is  of 
less  importance  to  reporters,  overworked  priests 
of  the  great  modern  cult  of  the  obvious.  They 
accept  Horthy  at  the  face  value  of  Admiral 
Beatty's  cap. 

At  a  conservative  estimate,  thirty-three  per  cent 
of  Admiral  Horthy's  prestige  in  England  and 
America  is  accounted  for  by  his  cap.  Fifty  per 
cent,  say,  of  it  is  due  to  the  belief,  assiduously 
fostered  by  a  well-organized  propaganda,  that  it 
was  he  who  put  an  end  to  the  Hungarian  commune. 
The  remaining  seventeen  per  cent  is  derived  from 
his  reputation  as  Hungary's  saviour  from  the 
Hapsburgs. 

Now,  it  is  true  that  Horthy  is  responsible  for 
the  killing  of  a  great  many  Bolsheviki,  and,  as  will 
be  seen,  of  a  great  many  non-Bolsheviki  as  well; 
and  laudable  though  that  achievement  may  appear 
to  some,  to  the  unprejudiced  mind  it  is  not  the 
equivalent  of  his  having  defeated  Bolshevism.  And 
as  to  Horthy  being  the  man  who  kept  the  Haps- 
burgs out  of  Hungary — well,  it  is  a  fact  that  he 
was  present  when  the  sun  of  Charles's  hopes  set 
for  the  last  time.  Even  so  was  Chantecler  present 
at  sunrise.  But  Chantecler,  with  his  sense  of  humour 
stirred  to  life  at  the  wrong  moment,  went  down  in 
tragedy;  whereas  Horthy,  who  has  no  sense  of 
humour  at  all,  but,  instead,  a  very  keen  sense  of 
business,  proceeded  to  present  the  bill.  "For  one 
Hapsburg  sunset,  a  blank  cheque,  drawn  by  the 


ADMIRAL    NICHOLAS    HORTHY 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY  259 

Entente  on  the  people  of  Hungary  to  the  order 
of  Nicholas  Horthy,  Regent." 

The  bill  was  approved,  the  voucher  issued.  It 
was  not  the  first  instance  in  Horthy's  career  that 
he  cashed  in  on  a  coincidence. 

He  is  nothing  if  not  unoriginal.  He  takes  the 
patterns  for  his  actions  and  gestures,  like  his  suc- 
cesses, wherever  he  finds  them.  By  the  way,  it  is 
not  only  his  cap  that  reminds  of  Lord  Beatty.  It's 
his  chin,  too.  Once  he  explained  to  the  corre- 
spondent of  a  New  York  newspaper  that  he  was 
determined  to  maintain  law  and  order  at  all  cost. 
(Of  Admiral  Horthy's  conception  of  law  and 
order,  more  anon.)  He  quoted  a  pronunciamento 
he  had  made  to  a  deputation  of  workers.  "  'Re- 
member,' he  had  said,  'that  I  am  here  to  keep  order, 
and'  —  here  the  Admiral's  jaws  squared  like 
Beatty's,  and  his  fist  crashed  down  on  his  desk— 
'I  am  going  to  keep  order.' "  Was  that  squaring 
of  the  jaw  spontaneous,  or  was  it  aimed  consciously 
at  effect?  We  don't  pretend  to  know.  What  we 
know  is  that  it  scored  a  full  hit.  British  heroes 
ought  to  copyright  their  features. 

Another  historic  character  to  Vvhom  he  paid  the 
tribute  of  flattery's  sincerest  form  is  Henry  of 
Navarre.  To  that  great  Huguenot  Paris  was  worth 
a  mass.  Budapest  was  worth  another  to  Horthy, 
descendant  of  stiff-necked  Calvinists.  Rumour  has 
it  that  in  1920,  on  his  elevation  to  the  Regency,  he 
embraced  Roman  Catholicism — not  unmindful,  add 
the  malignant,  of  the  provision  of  Hungarian  basic 


260  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

law  limiting  succession  to  the  throne  to  Roman 
Catholics.  Be  that  as  it  may,  it  is  certain  that 
Horthy  the  Calvinist  attends  mass  regularly,  and 
he  has  been  photographed  kissing  the  banner  of  the 
Virgin  Mary,  ancient  emblem  of  Catholic  Hun- 
gary. An  emblem  not  unknown  to  some,  perhaps, 
of  Horthy's  own  Calvinist  ancestors,  chained  by  a 
Hapsburg  king  to  Neapolitan  galley  benches. 

Nor  does  his  patent  connection  with  the  Roman 
Church  end  with  this  act  of  homage.  Terrible  to 
heretics,  that  Church  can  be  most  gracious  to  the 
returned  prodigal.  To  Horthy  belongs  the  dis- 
tinction, not  divulged  ere  this  in  English  print,  of 
being  the  first  Calvinist  canonized,  albeit  infor- 
mally, by  Rome. 

That  same  Catholic  renaissance,  reigning  in 
Hungary  since  the  overthrow  of  the  Soviet,  which 
revived  the  long-abandoned  Banner  of  the  Holy 
Virgin,  postulated  that  the  Hungarian  army  be 
provided  with  a  special  patron  saint.  In  the  bad 
old  days  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  empire  when 
the  Hungarian  army  was  less  Hungarian  than  it 
is  now,  but  a  great  deal  more  of  an  army,  it  could 
get  along  without  such  patron  saint.  But  then 
Prussian  generals  were  available  for  command. 
Today  the  supply  of  Prussian  generals — and  of 
Prussian  auxiliary  divisions — is  shut  off  as  far  as 
Hungary  is  concerned;  is  there  any  wonder  that 
she  seeks  support  from  the  powers  beyond  ?  Appli- 
cation for  a  patron  saint  was  officially  made  to  the 
Holy  See,  which  in  due  time  announced  the  ap- 


ADMIRAL  IIORTHY  261 

pointment  to  the  post  of  St.  John  of  Capistrano, 
a  Neapolitan  monk  whose  fiery  eloquence  helped 
the  recruiting  campaigns  of  John  Hunyadi,  scourge 
of  the  Turks  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

Now  the  appointment  of  the  heavenly  captain- 
general  pleased  the  Catholic  element  of  the  coun- 
try, but  it  displeased  the  Calvinists  whose  power  in 
Hungary,  though  far  less  articulate  and  at  present 
rather  dormant,  is  potentially  quite  considerable. 
For  once  these  Protestants  lived  up  to  their  name 
and  protested  against  pasting  a  sectarian  label  over 
the  National  Army.  This  protest  did  not  em- 
barrass the  Chaplain-General,  the  Roman  Catholic 
Bishop  Zadravecz.  If,  he  said,  the  Calvinists  re- 
sented that  the  army  should  have  a  Catholic  patron 
saint — why,  it  was  perfectly  simple :  there  ought  to 
be  a  Calvinist  patron  saint,  too.  Would  the  High 
Presbytery  kindly  suggest  one  of  its  own  saints 
for  the  office  of  co-patron?  The  amazed  Calvinists 
replied  that  they  were  obliged  for  the  kindness,  but 
that  they  had  no  saints.  And  now  Bishop  Zadra- 
vecz had  an  inspiration.  He  ordered  a  large  panel 
painted  for  the  church  of  the  Budapest  garrison — 
a  panel  representing  in  friendly  company  St.  John 
of  Capistrano,  the  fighting  Franciscan  of  Naples, 
with  Nicholas  Horthy,  the  Calvinist  Admiral.  Be- 
tween the  two  the  likeness  of  Bishop  Zadravecz  him- 
self was  portrayed,  evidently  a  sort  of  heavenly 
liaison  officer.  Everybody  was  happy,  except,  per- 
haps, the  spirit  of  John  Calvin— but  then  he  was 
left  out  of  the  consultation. 


262  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

In  this  triptych  Admiral  Horthy  appears 
mounted  on  his  white  horse.  That  white  horse,  like 
Beatty's  cap,  has  become  a  fixture  of  the  Horthy 
myth;  like  Beatty's  cap,  it  is  a  plagiarism — its 
spiritual  ancestor,  as  it  were,  was  the  celebrated 
black  horse  of  the  French  royalist  General  Boulan- 
ger.  He  rode  this  white  horse  when,  in  Novem- 
ber, 1919,  he  entered  Budapest  as  a  conqueror,  at 
the  head  of  his  National  Army,  with  the  Banner 
of  the  Virgin  waving  above  his  (alas!  heretical) 
head.  That  ride  was  one  of  the  climaxes  of  Admiral 
Horthy's  career.  Official  Hungary  celebrated  the 
event  as  a  great  victory  over  the  Roumanians  who 
had  evacuated  the  city  on  the  day  before.  Official 
Hungary  disregarded  the  trifling  detail  that  there 
was  no  causal  connection  between  the  Roumanian 
withdrawal  and  Horthy's  entry.  The  National 
Army  had  never  had  a  chance  to  fire  a  shot  at 
King  Ferdinand's  troops.  They  left  because  the 
Allies  at  Paris  ordered  them  to.  Had  the  Hun- 
garian Government  desired  to  commemorate  the 
event  by  a  special  coin,  in  all  honesty  the  inscription 
should  have  been:  "Afflavit  Concilium  Supremum 
et  Dissipati  Sunt"  But  no  special  coin  was  struck, 
and  even  had  there  been  one,  the  chances  are  that 
the  inscription  would  have  contained  more  poetry 
than  truth.  Servility  to  humdrum  fact  is  none  of 
the  vices  of  the  new  chivalry  that  rules  Hungary  in 
the  person  of  Admiral  Horthy. 

There  are  people,  in  Hungary  and  out,  to  whom 
the  idea  of  a  mounted  Admiral  appears  irresistibly 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY  263 

funny.  Such  exaggerated  sense  of  humor  is  classi- 
fied by  the  Hungarian  jDenal  code,  as  amended 
under  Horthy's  reign,  as  a  kind  of  Icse-majcstc— 
the  technical  term  is  "violation  of  the  governor," 
crimen  Iccsi  guhernatoris.  But  in  the  music  halls 
of  Vienna  and  Prague,  cities  outside  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  Hungarian  courts,  allusions  are  often  heard 
to  the  mounted  Admiral  at  Budapest,  and  the  tone 
of  these  references  is,  I  am  afraid,  rather  OfFen- 
bachian.  There  are,  moreover,  iconoclasts  who 
question  the  necessity,  and  even  good  taste,  of  wear- 
ing an  Admiral's  uniform  in  a  country  that  has  as 
much  of  a  seaboard  and  as  much  of  a  navy  as 
Switzerland.  These  ill-mannered  people  sneer  at 
Horthy's  promotion  lists  which  usually  include  a 
few  naval  appointments — Captain  of  Corvet  So- 
and-So  to  be  Captain  of  Frigate;  Lieutenant  This- 
or-That  to  be  Captain  of  Corvet,  and  so  on.  But 
making  fun  of  this  sort  of  thing  is  a  sign  of  bad 
breeding  in  Budapest;  usually  only  Bolsheviki  are 
guilty  of  it. 

II 

There  is  one  point  on  which  both  Horthy's  ene- 
mies and  his  friends  emphatically  agree:  that  he  is 
the  prototype  of  his  class,  and  the  symbol  of  that 
class  returned  to  power.  Hungarians  call  this  class, 
with  a  word  borrowed  from  English,  gentry; 
squirearchy  would  probably  describe  it  better. 

Up  to  1848  this  class,  together  with  the  aristoc- 


264  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

racy,  was  the  sole  possessor  of  the  land  and  of 
political  and  civil  rights.  The  serfs — glehce  ad- 
scripti  since  1514 — paid  their  tithes  and  their  taxes, 
worshipped  God  and  the  landlord,  and  bred  and 
died  like  cattle.  The  aristocrats  were  absentees, 
mostly  at  the  Vienna  court,  in  whose  atmosphere 
they  were  slowly  denationalized.  In  the  seven- 
teenth century  most  of  the  great  noble  houses  were 
reclaimed  from  Protestantism  by  Hapsburg  coun- 
ter-reformation. This  fact  accentuated  the  cleav- 
age between  them  and  the  gentry,  which  remained 
Calvinist  to  a  large  extent.  In  contrast  to  the  Aus- 
trianized  nobles,  the  squirearchy  preserved  intact 
the  old  national  customs  and  traditions,  including 
a  thorough  contempt  for  the  national  language; 
up  to  the  nineteenth  century,  a  sort  of  pidgin-Latin 
was  the  official  and  the  polite  idiom.  These  gentry 
lived  in  their  manors  a  life  of  idleness  tempered  by 
a  little  husbandry,  a  good  deal  of  hunting,  eating 
and  drinking,  and  peppered  by  occasional  outbursts 
of  rhetoric  which  they  called  politics.  Upon  culture 
they  looked  down  as  something  alien  and  therefore 
detestable.  They  seduced  pretty  peasant  girls  and 
administered  corporeal  punishment  to  indignant 
peasant  fathers. 

Originally  their  levees-en-masse ,  called  "noble 
insurrections,"  provided  defense  for  the  country 
against  external  enemies.  But  gradually  these 
levees  ceased,  and  the  country  was  protected  by 
professional  armies  of  royal  mercenaries  and  im- 
pressed  serfs,  the   expenses   being,   conveniently, 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY  265 

borne  by  the  serfs  who  escaped  impressment.  The 
gentry  were  in  eternal  opposition  to  the  central 
government,  which  they  denounced  as  alien  op- 
pression. This  also  was  a  convenient  arrangement, 
as  it  afforded  an  excuse  for  dodging  pubhc  service 
and  for  glorifying  passive  resistance  and  pohtical 
ca'canny  as  patriotism.  Even  their  "stiff-necked" 
Calvinism  became  by  and  by  not  so  much  a  matter 
of  religious  fervour  as  a  pohtical  tradition,  a  mode 
of  teasing  the  Catholic  court.  It  was  the  gentry 
who  frustrated  the  enlightened  reforms  of  Joseph 
II,  disciple  of  Frederick  the  Great  and  noblest  of 
Hapsburg  rulers.  When  Metternich's  brilliant 
friend,  Friedrich  von  Gentz  said  that  Asia  be- 
gan at  the  gates  of  Vienna,  he  had  in  mind  this 
Hungarian  squirearchy,  retrograde,  narrow  and 
cruel. 

The  reform  laws  of  1848  abolished  serfdom  and 
the  nobility's  privileges,  including  exemption  from 
taxes,  and  enfranchised  the  burghers  and  propertied 
peasants.  That  was  a  terrible  blow  to  the  squire- 
archy. Deprived  from  the  fruits  of  the  tithe  and 
corvee,  they  actually  had  to  get  up  and  work  for 
a  living.  But  worse  things  were  yet  to  come.  In 
1868  the  Jews  of  Hungary,  mostly  old  settlers 
whose  lot  had  been  on  the  whole  fairly  good,  were 
emancipated.  That  was  the  coup  de  grace  to  the 
patriarchial  economy.  Western  methods  of  com- 
merce, industry  and  credit  were  introduced,  with 
free  competition  safeguarded  by  law.  The  great 
noble  houses  with  their  immense  wealth  weathered 


266  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

the  storm;  some  of  the  more  intellectually  mobile 
aristocrats  even  rode  the  crest  of  the  wave;  but  the 
gentry  went  down  rapidly.  Unwilling  to  surrender 
old  standards  of  life,  unwilling  to  learn  the  new 
profitable  pursuits,  they  sold  or  mortgaged  their 
estates  and  their  emancipation  bonds,  and  squan- 
dered the  remnants  of  their  patrimony  in  wild 
revels,  frequently  followed  by  suicide,  more  often 
by  the  slow  death  of  genteel  poverty  in  some  county^ 
sinecure.  On  the  other  hand,  the  power  of  the 
Jews,  thrifty,  provident,  quick  to  learn  the  new 
Western  ways,  increased  in  proportion.  At  the 
outbreak  of  the  World  War  Hungary  was  ruled 
by  the  alliance  of  great  aristocratic  families  and 
the  new  class  of  industrial  and  financial  magnates. 
The  country  was  still  an  oligarchy;  but  the  type 
changed  from  a  semi-oriental  patriarchal  rule  of 
the  squirearchy  to  a  more  Westernized  system  of 
large  scale  exploitation. 

The  collapse  of  the  Hapsburg  empire  in  Octo- 
ber, 1919,  ended  this  chapter  of  Hungarian  evolu- 
tion. The  revolution  of  October,  headed  by  a 
radical  aristocrat,  Count  Michael  Karolyi,  was  the 
work  of  two  elements  which  gathered  strength  in 
the  preceding  decades  of  gradual  Westernization 
— the  bourgeois  intellectuals,  mostly  Jewish,  and 
the  industrial  workers  of  Budapest.  It  was  a  very 
mild  affair,  indeed,  this  Revolution  of  the  White 
Aster;  its  leaders  were  middle  class  theorists  or 
Fabian  socialists;  its  aim  was  to  establish  peace 
with  the  Allies,  friendship  with  the  non-Magyar 


ADMIRAL  HORTIIY  207 

races,  and  to  reorganize  the  State  on  lines  of  West- 
ern democracy.  The  aspirations  and  the  intellec- 
tual level  of  the  movement  were  high ;  but  it  had  no 
root  in  the  politically  undeveloped  masses;  it  was 
topheavy. 

Had  Karolyi  succeeded  in  dividing  tlie  great 
estates,  with  compensation  to  the  old  owners, 
among  the  peasantry,  he  would  have  won  the  sup- 
port of  the  latter,  and  would  probably  have  en- 
dured. But  the  blows  of  a  short-sighted  allied 
policy  (Les  vamqueurs  sont  tou jours  Bodies, 
wrote  Oscar  Jaszi,  the  brilliant  leader  of  intellec- 
tual radicals) ,  and  of  a  Russian-financed  Bolshevik 
propaganda  of  returned  war  prisoners  from  within, 
undermined  his  authority.  Karolyi  fell;  the  Soviet 
came  into  power.  But  the  Soviet  had  even  less 
vital  strength  behind  it  than  the  liberal  revolution ; 
it  was  born  of  despair,  a  makeshift  run  by  a  group 
of  stupid,  ill-educated  adventurers  and  narrow- 
minded,  if  honest,  dogmatists.  Instead  of  trying 
to  win  over  the  peasants,  the  one  real  if  inarticulate 
power  in  the  country,  they  did  everything  to  antag- 
onize them.  The  Hungarian  Commune  was  on  the 
point  of  collapse  from  inner  rottenness  when  the 
Roumanian  attack,  at  the  end  of  July,  1919,  dealt 
it  the  deathblow. 

The  Roumanians  entered  Budapest,  and  dis- 
armed not  only  the  Communists,  who  at  this  time 
were  throwing  away  their  arms  voluntarily,  but 
also  the  anti-Communist  Trade  Unionists.  They 
did  not  disarm  the  White  Guards,  formed  either 


268  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

beyond  the  frontiers  of  Soviet  power  or  at  Buda- 
pest, in  the  moment  of  the  overturn.  Three  months 
later  the  Roumanians  left,  on  orders  from  Paris.  At 
that  moment  the  only  organized  power  in  the 
country  was  the  army  of  White  Guard  detach- 
ments; and  these  White  Guards  represented  an 
armed  class — the  Gentry.  After  a  lapse  of  almost 
eighty  years  suddenly  the  Magyar  gentry  was  back 
in  the  seat  of  supreme  power,  unchallenged.  It 
was  a  return  with  a  vengeance — only  too  literally 
so.  Their  leader  and  standard  bearer  was  Admiral 
Nicholas  Horthy. 

Ill 

It  was  in  the  days  of  the  Soviet  regime  at 
Budapest  that  a  few  hundred  officers  of  the  old 
Austro-Hungarian  army  formed  at  Szegedin  a 
counter-revolutionary  government.  Szegedin  was 
beyond  the  reach  of  Bela  Kun's  power,  in  the  zone 
assigned  by  the  terms  of  the  armistice  to  the  Jugo- 
slavs, and  was  garrisoned  by  French  colonial 
troops.  A  cabinet  was  appointed,  or  rather  ap- 
pointed itself,  but  this  cabinet  had  no  real  attribute 
of  power  except  a  small  volunteer  army  consisting 
exclusively  of  officers,  on  the  Russian  counter-revo- 
lutionary pattern.  It  had  no  constructive  policy, 
no  programme,  no  working  plan  beyond  the  en- 
gineering of  anti-Communist  intrigue  at  Budapest. 
It  was  financed  by  French  subsidies  and  by  "volun- 
tary"  contributions   of  wealthy    Szegedin   Jews, 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY  269 

whose  patriotic  zeal  was  stimulated  by  visits  of 
grim-looking  officers  carrying,  rather  obviously,  ))ig 
Mauser  pistols  in  their  holsters.  The  one  thing 
that  forged  these  men  into  a  potential  political 
instrument  was  their  hatred  of  Bela  Kun  p'uI 
his  gang.  They  might  have  adopted  as  their 
motto,  "Hang  the  Bolsheviki — after  that  the 
deluge." 

But  this  hatred,  this  lust  of  revenge  sought  out 
the  Communists  at  Budapest  only  as  the  nearest 
target  at  hand,  as  the  scapegoat  conveniently  sub- 
stituted for  a  much  more  dangerous  but  much  less 
palpable  enemy.  Almost  without  exception  these 
officers  belonged  to  the  Gentry,  the  class  dispos- 
sessed from  its  privileges  during  the  last  half  cen- 
tury. They  were  victims  of  the  evolution  that 
wound  its  way  through  industrialisation  toward 
modern  Western  democracy  and  reached  a  pre- 
mature pinnacle  in  the  brief  period  of  the  Karolyi 
Republic.  In  this  evolution  Soviet  rule  was  a  mere 
interlude,  a  diversion  and  delay  rather  than  a  real- 
ized aim.  The  more  sophisticated  among  the  offi- 
cers and  bureaucrats  perceived  that  their  real  enemy 
was  not  violent  revolution  which,  after  all,  could 
be  countered  by  more  violence,  but  democratic  evo- 
lution with  its  subtle  and  irresistible  processes. 
Now  the  carriers,  the  agents  of  that  evolution  were 
the  intellectual  and  commercial  bourgeoisie,  con- 
sisting mostly  of  Jews.  But  most  of  the  Com- 
munist leaders  were  Jews,  too.  Here  was  a 
coincidence,  and  in  a  sense  something  more  sub- 


270  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

stantial  than  a  coincidence,  that  the  leaders  of  the 
counter-Revolutionists  realized  afforded  a  great 
simplification,  that  could  be  exploited  for  purposes 
of  propaganda. 

To  the  great  majority  of  the  officers,  of  course, 
these  considerations  never  occurred.  All  they  could 
understand  was  that  an  intangible  something,  some 
sort  of  a  human  earthquake,  had  swept  away  the 
foundations  of  the  old  Hungarian  State  with  its 
comfortable  class  privileges,  had  destroyed  the 
Austro-Hungarian  army,  and  with  the  army  their 
own  livelihood.  All  they  knew  was  that  if  they 
could  not  be  officers  and  gentlemen,  they  would 
have  to  starve.  That  intangible  hostile  Something 
now  resulted  in  putting  a  bunch  of  "dirty  Jews" 
into  power.  But  even  before  the  revolution,  it  was 
Jews  to  whom  their  fathers  had  mortgaged  or  sold 
their  estates,  who  had  the  best  lawyers'  and  physi- 
cians' practices,  owned  the  factories,  bought  and 
sold  the  produce  of  the  land,  ran  the  newspapers, 
introduced  all  kinds  of  alien  notions,  French,  Eng- 
lish, German,  into  the  country. 

In  a  word,  the  Jews  were  at  the  bottom  of  all 
the  misery  that  befell  the  "historical"  class,  the  chief 
pillar  of  Magyar  nationhood,  the  Gentry.  The 
Jews  had  to  go.  The  mood  of  the  officers  was 
symbolized  by  one  Captain  Pronay,  head  of  one 
of  the  Szegedin  detachments, — as  the  officers'  units 
were  called — who  swore  that  he  would  not  rest 
until  he  killed  one  thousand  Jews  with  his  own 
hands.    The  officers  drilled  at  day — at  night  they 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY  271 

drank  to  the  Day  that  was  to  end  for  ever  the  rule 
of  Communists,  Liberals,  intellectuals  and  other 
Jews. 

The  commander-in-chief  of  this  officers'  army 
was  Nicholas  Horthy  de  Nagybanya,  A^ice-A(l- 
miral  of  the  old  Austro-Hungarian  na\y.  He  was 
the  son  of  a  fairly  prosperous  Calvinist  squire  of 
County  Szolnok,  in  the  heart  of  the  great  Hun- 
garian plain.  Young  Horthy  went  in  for  a  na\al 
career,  a  very  unusual  thing  among  members 
of  his  class,  who  commonly  regarded  the  cavalry 
as  the  only  arm  worthy  of  their  choice.  The  navy 
was  a  purely  Imperial,  un-Magyar  institution; 
naval  officers  had  to  be  educated  at  Pola ;  they  had 
to  speak  German;  they  had  nothing  to  do  with 
horses;  and  thus  were  apt  to  become  denationalized. 
To  this  very  day  Nicholas  Horthy  speaks  Hungar- 
ian with  a  German  accent.  His  advancement  in 
the  navy  was  good.  He  was  assigned  to  the 
general  staff,  and  later  appointed  aid  to  the  old 
Emperor  Francis  Joseph,  a  rare  honour  for  a 
Magyar  and  a  Calvinist. 

In  the  war  Captain  Horthy  commanded  the 
cruiser  "Novara,"  ominously  named  after  Ra- 
detzky's  victory  over  the  Piedmontese  in  1848.  He 
displayed  considerable  physical  courage,  the  kind 
of  dash  which  is  the  mark  of  cavalry  officers  of  his 
class.  It  was  his  squadron  that  shelled,  repeatedly, 
Italian  coast  cities.  He  was  wounded  in  tlic  buttle 
of  Otranto.  But  his  supreme  exploit,  the  one  that 
brought  him  the  rank  of  Admiral  was  the  quelling 


272  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

of  the  naval  mutiny  at  Cattaro.  It  was  a  most 
characteristic  exploit  in  more  than  one  sense. 

The  men  who  rebelled  at  Cattaro  were,  like  the 
majority  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  naval  person- 
nel, Jugo-Slavs,  Croat-speaking  Dalmatians — since 
Roman  days  among  the  best  sailors  in  Europe. 
What  caused  the  mutiny  is  not  quite  clear — some 
say  it  was  too  much  Jugo-Slav  national  feeling, 
others,  too  much  sauerkraut.  One  day  the  red  flag 
was  hoisted  on  several  destroyers  and  light  cruisers 
in  the  harbor,  and  officers  on  board  were  disarmed. 
A  loyal  somebody  in  the  land  fortress  flashed  out 
a  radio  call  for  help.  There  was  a  fleet  of  German 
submarines  in  the  Straits  of  Otranto.  A  squadron 
was  dispatched  at  full  speed  to  deal  with  the  muti- 
neers. The  submarines  entered  the  harbour.  A  few 
shots  were  fired.  The  mutineers  surrendered  un- 
conditionally. When  all  was  over  Horthy  ap- 
peared on  the  scene.  His  cruiser  hoisted  the 
Imperial  ensign;  the  ship's  band  struck  up  the 
Imperial  anthem;  and  henceforth  Horthy  was 
known  as  the  Hero  of  Cattaro.  He  court-mar- 
tialled  the  rebels  and  had  a  number  of  them  shot. 
Soon  he  was  promoted  to  the  rank  of  vice-admiral. 

When  the  end  came,  a  particularly  odious  and 
humihating  task  fell  to  Horthy's  lot:  he  was  in- 
structed to  turn  over  the  entire  Austro-Hungarian 
fleet  to  the  Jugo-Slavs.  From  that  mom^ent  the 
Austro-Hungarian  navy  was  a  mere  memory,  and 
Horthy  was  an  admiral  only  in  partibus  infidelium, 
having  no  more  to  do  with  a  fleet  than  the  Roman 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY  273 

Archbishop  of  Trebizond  has  to  do  with  his  dio- 
cese. A  prouder  soul  might  have  discarded  tlie 
admiral's  uniform,  now  the  token  of  defeat  and 
disgrace ;  a  more  realistic  spirit  would  have  sought 
new  fields  of  patriotic  endeavour,  would  have 
adapted  itself  to  the  exigencies  of  a  situation  where 
Hungary's  interests  lay  in  forgetting  as  quickly 
about  armies  and  navies  as  possible.  Not  so 
Horthy.  He  wore  his  naval  uniform  when  he  re- 
tired into  the  steppes  of  his  paternal  estate  in 
County  Szolnok,  and  did  not  re-emerge  until  the 
formation  of  the  counter-revolutionary  government 
at  Szegedin. 

IV 

When  Bela  Kun  fell  Horthy  asked  the  French 
command  for  permission  to  enter  Budapest  with 
his  troops.  But  they  were  not  wanted  there  by  the 
Roumanians,  and  the  French,  none  too  loath  to  he 
rid  of  the  boisterous  and  rather  useless  auxiliaries, 
allowed  them  to  cross  into  the  Trans-Danubian 
country.  Horthy  now  established  headquarters  at 
the  popular  bathing  resort  Siofok,  on  Lake  Bala- 
ton. The  detachments  were  turned  loose  on  the 
countryside. 

What  followed  now  is  comparable  only  to  the 
record  of  the  Turks  in  Armenia — nothing  in  recent 
European  history  furnishes  a  parallel.  Before 
leaving  Szegedin  Horthy  issued  to  the  detachment 
chiefs  blanket  warrants  "to  pronounce  and  execute 
sentence  on  the  guilty."  Under  the  pretext  of 
18 


274  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

searching  for  and  punishing  Communists,  the  offi- 
cers raided  and  plundered  villages,  outraged 
women,  maltreated  and  killed  Jews  and  whomever 
else  incurred  their  displeasure.  The  brutality  of 
the  acts  committed  and  the  flimsiness  of  the  excuses 
proffered  surpasses  belief.  Old  grudges  were 
settled  in  a  summary  fashion.  Years  ago  a  dis- 
tressed squire  may  have  sold  his  harvest  to  a  Jew 
for  what  he  thought  was  a  bad  price.  Now  the 
squire  came  back,  chief  of  a  Communist-hunting 
squad;  he  seized  the  Jew,  hanged  him  and  took  his 
property.  Or  else  an  officer  would  see  a  Jew  wear- 
ing a  new  suit  of  clothes.  He  would  shoot  the  Jew 
and  expropriate  the  suit.  In  several  places  the 
Catholic  priests  themselves  tried  to  protect  innocent 
Jews ;  they  were  hanged  on  the  spot.  It  should  be 
remembered  that  well-to-do  Jews  had  suffered  just 
as  much  under  Communism  as  Christians ;  but  that 
did  not  make  any  difference;  they  were  arrested, 
tortured  and  murdered.  The  number  of  victims 
who  perished  in  these  atrocities  can  be  put  between 
five  and  six  thousand.  I  have  no  space  to  relate 
these  horrors  in  detail;  reliable  accounts  may  be 
found  in  the  files  of  the  Manchester  Guardian,  of 
Vienna,  Prague  and  Italian  newspapers.  But  I 
have  to  tell  of  two  incidents  which  help  in  rounding 
out  the  portrait  of  the  Hero  of  Cattaro. 

One  of  the  terror  detachments  was  headed  by  a 
Count  Salm,  a  Hungarian  officer  of  Austrian 
descent.  He  had  achieved  unenviable  fame  by  an 
exploit   at   Dunafoldvar,    where   he   murdered   a 


ADMIRAL  HORTIIY  275 

wealthy  Jewish  merchant,  not  without  having  j)re- 
viously  exacted  a  ransom  for  safe-conduct.  After 
the  murder  the  Count  not  only  took  all  cash  and 
valuables  from  the  victim's  house,  but  also  pulled 
a  pair  of  brand  new  shoes  off  his  feet,  remarking 
that  dead  Jews  needed  no  new  shoes.  But  Count 
Salm's  most  substantial  claim  to  a  reputation  rests 
on  the  case  of  the  Jewish  millionaire  Albert  Freund 
de  Toszeg,  member  of  one  of  the  greatest  industrial 
famihes  of  Hungary.  Count  Salm's  party  raided 
Freund's  chateau,  near  Lake  Balaton.  Witliout 
further  ado,  without  even  a  pretext,  the  millionaire 
was  condemned  to  be  hanged  in  the  presence  of  his 
wife.  The  peasants  of  the  village  witnessed  the 
proceedings  in  dumb  horror;  Freund  was  a  kindly 
man,  and  they  all  liked  him.  Count  Salm  asked 
an  onlooker  for  a  piece  of  rope.  The  peasant  said 
he  had  none.  Infuriated,  the  Count  sent  off  the 
villagers  to  search  for  a  rope;  after  a  while  they 
returned  and  said  that  no  rope  was  to  be  found  in 
the  place.  Thereupon  Salm  tore  a  piece  of  wire 
from  a  fence  and  hanged  the  unfortunate  with  his 
own  hands.  Mrs.  Freund  fainted;  the  peasants 
wept;  the  gypsy  band  which  accompanied  the  offi- 
cers played  ribald  songs. 

Now  hundreds  of  other  Jews  had  been  murdered 
before  this  in  a  similar  way,  and  nothing  further 
happened.  But  this  was  different.  Freund  was  a 
millionaire  and  belonged  to  a  very  influential  fam- 
ily. The  case  was  reported  to  the  Allied  represen- 
tatives at  Budapest,  and  an  inquiry  was  ordered. 


276  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

Under  this  pressure  Commander-in-Chief  Horthy 
issued  a  warrant  for  Sahn's  arrest.  A  search  was 
made.  A  few  days  later  Horthy  reported  to  the 
Alhed  Missions  that  he  was  very  sorry,  but  Sahn 
had  disappeared.  All  the  while  Count  Salm  stayed 
right  at  headquarters,  and  dined  and  wined  with 
Horthy  every  night. 

Some  officers  captured  a  batch  of  Communists 
and  took  them  to  the  encampment  at  Siofok.  They 
were  surrounded  by  soldiers,  terribly  beaten  and 
ordered  to  dig  their  own  graves.  In  the  midst  of 
this  scene  Admiral  Horthy  appeared,  mounted  on 
his  white  horse.  He  rode  into  the  group  of  pris- 
oners and  exclaimed:  "You  dirty  swine,  you  are 
getting  what's  due  to  you."  Thereupon  he  spat 
on  them,  and  rode  away.  The  graves  were  dug, 
and  a  firing  squad  closed  the  incident. 

These  two  stories  were  related  by  one  of 
Horthy's  own  officers,  who,  unable  to  endure  the 
horrors  any  longer,  deserted  the  Siofok  headquar- 
ters, and  escaped  to  Vienna. 

I  had  a  friend,  a  young  Hungarian,  member  of 
one  of  the  oldest  families  of  the  untitled  nobility. 
He  had  been  educated  in  England  and  France,  and 
became  entirely  Westernized,  a  sincere  Liberal. 
During  the  worst  days  of  the  White  Terror,  I  met 
him  accidentally  in  New  York.  I  expressed  amaze- 
ment at  the  behaviour  of  the  noble  officers.  I  said 
that  this  particular  class  had  always  impressed 
me  with  its  handsome  exterior,  its  good  manners, 
its  high   sense   of  honour.      I   thought  that   the 


ADMIRAL  HORTIIY  277 

Hungarian  gentry  was  composed  of  gentlemen 
in  the  English  sense,  and  now  these  same  men 
perpetrated  horrors  that  cannot  be  mentioned  in 
print,  horrors  from  which  Red  Indians  would  have 
shrunk. 

He  smiled,  sadly.  "You  were  wrong,"  he  said. 
"Whatever  is  going  on  in  Hungary  today  does  not 
surprise  me  a  bit.  The  dissolution  of  old  bonds, 
the  tabula  rasa  of  revolution  and  counter-revolu- 
tion, have  provided  at  last  the  Hungarian  gentry 
with  an  environment  in  which  it  can  unfold  its 
latent  character  without  hindrance.  If  they  are 
running  amuck,  they  are  only  running  true  to  fonn. 
We  have  never  learned  to  do  anything  useful.  All 
we  can  do  is  to  drink,  to  cheat,  to  bully  the  weak  and 
to  torment  and  rob  the  helpless.  That's  our  tradi- 
tion; today  is  our  Golden  Age.  Scratch  the  thin 
enamel  of  the  European  gentleman,  tear  off  the 
camouflage  of  the  cavalry  officer's  code  of  honour, 
and  you  will  find  the  Tartar  savage  in  us.  We  are 
the  true  successors  of  Huns  and  Petchenegs.  I 
have  a  right  to  talk  like  that — my  family  tree  is  nine 
hundred  years  old,  and  three  of  my  cousins  are 
serving  in  Horthy's  army.  I  assure  you  that 
Horthy  is  our  true  representative." 

V 

In  November,  1919,  the  Supreme  Council  or- 
dered the  Roumanian  army  out  of  Budapest.  On 
the  day  following  the  evacuation.  Admiral  Horthy 
led  his  troops  into  the  capital.    Two  of  his  declara- 


278  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

tions  on  this  occasion  deserve  notice.  "I  come  as 
the  heutenant  of  my  lawful  ruler  and  sovereign, 
King  Charles,"  he  said.  Admiral  Kolchak  gave 
way  to  General  Monk.  A  delegation  of  Trade 
Unionists  and  Social  Democrats  waited  on  him. 
He  declared:  "I  do  not  negotiate  with  workers.  I 
command  and  they  obey."  Horthy  is  nothing  if 
not  unoriginal.  Budapest  had  heard  those  words 
before.  In  1849,  during  the  revolution,  Field-Mar- 
shal Prince  Windischgraetz  seized  Budapest  in  the 
name  of  the  Emperor,  as  Kossuth's  Government 
fled  to  Debreczen.  A  group  of  Magyar  notables 
called  on  him,  seeking  a  compromise.  The  Prince 
was  adamant.  '^'^Mit  Rehellen  unterhandle  ich 
nicht."  "I  do  not  negotiate  with  rebels."  Those 
words — and  Windischgraetz's  demand  for  "unhe- 
dingte  Unterwerfungf*  unconditional  surrender — 
have  burnt  themselves  into  Hungarian  history. 
Like  at  Cattaro,  at  Budapest  Horthy,  Emperor 
Charles's  lieutenant,  stepped  into  a  ready-made 
pose  and  annexed  a  ready-made  phrase. 

And  now  came  another  victory,  even  more  im- 
portant. Sir  George  Clerk  arrived  at  Budapest  as 
Allied  High  Commissioner  and  peace-maker  among 
the  warring  Magyar  factions.  He  came  and  saw, 
and  Horthy  conquered.  He  wore  a  cap  like 
Beatty's;  he  had  good  table  manners;  the  atmos- 
phere at  the  castle  was  pleasant.  Sir  George 
trusted  Horthy.  A  compromise,  insuring  two 
places  in  the  Cabinet  for  Social  Democrats  and  free 
and  impartial  elections  for  a  National  Assembly, 


ADMIRAL  HORTIIY  ^70 

was  effected.  Some  Liberals  demanded  ^laran- 
tees.  Sir  George  did  not  see  wliy  guariintees  were 
necessary.  He  had  not  heard  of  Count  Salm.  lie 
had  not  spoken  to  the  men  who  dug  their  own 
graves  at  Siofok.  Sir  George  said:  "Ilorthy  is 
a  gentleman." 

Sir  George  left  Budapest.  The  two  Socialist 
ministers  were  dismissed.  The  "free  and  impar- 
tial" elections  were  held  under  the  auspices  of 
machine  gun  detachments.  Forty  thousand  opposi- 
tion voters  were  interned,  over  a  score  of  opposition 
candidates  were  imprisoned,  two  opposition  editors 
were  murdered.  The  National  Assembly  convened, 
and  elected  Horthy  Regent.  Unanimously.  The 
officers  of  the  Ostenburg  detachment,  who  with 
drawn  revolvers  invaded  the  floor  and  the  galleries 
of  the  Assembly  just  before  the  session  was  called 
to  order,  did  not  vote.  They  just  furnished  the 
setting  for  the  unanimity. 

Once  more  the  Regent  emphasized  that  he  was 
a  mere  lieutenant  of  the  King.  "I  shall  cede  tlie 
supreme  power  to  the  lawful  King  as  soon  as 
external  circumstances  permit,"  he  said.  Just  the 
same — safety  first,  one  never  can  tell  what  may 
happen — he  made  the  army  swear  an  oath  of 
allegiance  to  himself.  Some  elder  officers  refused 
to  swear — they  protested  that  their  oath  to  Charles 
was  good  enough  and  accused  the  Regent  of  secret 
ambitions  to  the  crown. 

He  had  betrayed  the  political  traditions  of  his 
class   when  he   entered  the   Imperial   Navy   and 


280  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

joined  the  Imperial  Household.  He  now  pro- 
ceeded to  betray  his  betrayal.  He  was,  professedly, 
the  lieutenant  of  the  exiled  King,  and  nothing  else. 
At  Easter,  1921,  the  exiled  King  returned.  Only 
four  days  before  Charles's  arrival  Regent  Horthy 
declared  in  the  Petit  Parisien;  "Hungary  is  a 
kingdom.  In  the  absence  of  the  King  I  am  the 
Regent.  Emperor  Charles  is  our  only  lawful 
King." 

Four  days  later  King  and  Regent  faced  each 
other  in  the  Castle  at  Budapest.  The  Little  En- 
tente had  delivered  its  ultimatum:  Hapsburg 
restoration  was  to  be  regarded  as  a  case  for  war. 
Once  more  somebody  volunteered  to  pick  Horthy's 
chestnut  out  of  the  fire.  Horthy  ordered  his  "only 
lawful  King"  to  leave  the  country.  Charles  obeyed. 
Horthy,  who  doubtless  during  the  proceedings  was 
congratulating  himself  for  having  had  the  fore- 
sight to  exact  an  oath  of  allegiance  from  the 
troops,  chuckled  to  himself.  He  chuckled  even 
more,  half  a  year  later,  when  Charles  tried  his  luck 
again.  The  airplane  excursion  ended  in  near- 
tragedy.  Czechoslovakia,  Jugoslavia  mobilized. 
Horthy,  at  the  head  of  his  troops,  shelled  the  royal 
train.  Charles  was  taken  prisoner,  and  was  soon 
on  his  way  to  Madeira.  Europe  and  America  ap- 
plauded Horthy  for  saving  Hungary  from  Haps- 
burgism.  In  reality,  he  only  saved  his  own  chance 
to  the  throne  of  Hungary. 

In  the  spring  of  1920  a  delegation  of  British 
Labour,  headed  by  Colonel  J.  C.  Wedgwood,  M. 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY  «8i 

P.,  arrived  in  Hungary  to  investigate  charges  of 
the  White  Terror.  Their  report,  fully  documented, 
tells  of  horrors  unspeakable  and  unprintable.  Two 
officers,  especially,  Captain  Pronay  (above  men- 
tioned) and  Lieutenant  Hejjas,  were  found  guilty 
of  atrocities  beside  which  the  worst  German  deeds 
in  Belgium  pale.  Colonel  Wedgwood  asked  Mr. 
Hohler,  British  High  Commissioner,  what  he  knew 
about  these  officers.  Mr.  Hohler  said  he  had  been 
informed  by  the  Hungarian  Government  that 
Pronay  and  Hejjas  had  been  "demobilized."  Col- 
onel Wedgwood  went  to  the  IMinistry  of  War,  and 
found  that  the  two  officers  were  still  on  the  army 
payroll.  Colonel  Wedgwood  then  inquired  from 
Regent  Horthy.  "They  are  my  best  officers,"  said 
the  Regent. 

But  then,  these  officers  are  very  powerful.  A 
Pretorian  Guard  is  a  most  useful  instrument,  but 
one  has  to  pay  the  price.  Once  a  delegation  of 
Budapest  Jews  waited  on  Regent  Horthy,  who 
received  them  in  state,  attended  by  two  officers. 
The  Regent  was  most  gracious.  He  assured  the 
delegates  that  although  he  disliked  bad  Jews,  he 
liked  good  Jews,  that  he  knew  the  delegates  be- 
longed to  the  latter  category,  and  that  everything 
would  come  out  all  right.  At  this  point  one  of 
the  officers  whispered  something  into  his  ear.  The 
Regent  retired  to  an  adjoining  room,  followed  by 
the  two  officers.  A  few  minutes  later  they  all  re- 
turned. But  the  Regent  was  a  changed  man.  He 
told,  in  the  harshest  tones,  the  astounded  delegates 


282  EMINENT  EUROPEANS 

that  he  expected  them  to  do  their  duty,  that  he 
would  stand  for  no  foolishness,  and  that  his  hand 
would  fall  heavily  on  the  disloyal.  Thereupon  he 
choked  his  heels  and  turned  his  back  on  the  visitors, 
a  gesture  copied  from  the  old  Emperor,  to  signify 
that  the  audience  was  over.  God  only  knows  what 
passed  between  the  Regent  and  his  officers — God 
only  knows,  but  anybody  can  guess. 

Hungary  today  is  the  most  chauvinistic  country 
in  Europe.  The  Pan-Turanian  movement,  which 
aims  at  a  spiritual  and  eventually  political  union  of 
Magyars,  Bulgars,  Turks  and  Tartars  against  the 
effete  nations  of  the  West,  is  very  popular,  and 
Regent  Horthy  is  its  patron.  He  travels  around 
in  a  special  train  named  "Turan."  But  then, 
Horthy  had  an  Austrian  education ;  he  speaks  Hun- 
garian with  a  strong  German  accent,  and  his  gram- 
mar is  bad.  "Le  style,  c'est  Vhomme."  When  he 
opened  an  exhibition  of  the  Hungarian  steel  in- 
dustries at  Budapest,  he  made  a  speech,  and  this 
speech  was  recorded  in  shorthand  by  a  Magyar 
journahst  who  later  fled  to  Vienna.  Said  Horthy: 
"It's  with  pleasure  I  came  here  to  open  this 
here  industry — er — hm — to  open  this  here  exhi- 
bition, which,  so  to  speak,  lost  more  during  the  war 
than  any  other — or  rather,  er,  suffered,  yes,  more. 
It  is  very  nice  that  you  could  accomplish  so  much 
in  such  short  time — it  shows  only  that  if  we  Hun- 
garians want  something,  we  go  and  get  it,  yes." 
He  stepped  to  a  group  of  exhibits,  and  read  the 
label    aloud.      "Exhibit    of    Debreczen    Machine 


ADMIRAL  HORTHY  283 

Works."  He  beamed.  "Is  this  in  Dcbrcczon^ 
How  interesting!  Debreczen  Machine  Works- 
is  in  Debreczen,  yes.  I  didn't  know."  Even  the 
detectives,  his  bodyguard,  grinned. 

VI 

The  German  submarines  quelled  the  Cattaro 
mutiny  and  Horthy  was  named  Admiral.  The 
Roumanians  destroyed  Bela  Kun,  and  Horthy  en- 
tered Budapest  in  triumph.  The  Little  Entente 
eliminated  Charles,  and  Horthy  was  hailed  as  the 
bane  of  the  Hapsburgs.  He  wears  his  cap  like 
Lord  Beatty,  has  beautiful  table  manners,  and  Sir 
George  Clerk  called  him  a  gentleman.  What  more 
do  you  want — in  Hungary?  Friedrich  von  Gentz 
said  that  Asia  began  at  the  gates  of  Vienna. 
He  was  right  a  hundred  years  ago.  He  is 
much  more  right  today.  In  1914  Budapest 
was  twenty  hours  from  London.  In  1921 
Budapest  was  twenty  minutes  from  Bokliara. 
The  Magyar  people  today  is  groaning  under 
the  yoke  of  Uzbeg  chieftains  who  created  them- 
selves a  ruler  in  their  own  image.  That  ruler  is 
Nicholas  Horthy,  Turanian  Khan  vv^ho  speaks  with 
a  German  accent,  Count  Salm's  friend  and  pro- 
tector, Calvinist  who  renounced  his  faith,  Admiral 
who  abandoned  his  ships.  Regent  who  betrayed  his 
King. 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


NOV  2     1928  kv,i«AY3119S^ 


OEC  7  ,    1928 

JflW  2      1930 
JAN  6      1933 


MU  2  3  1935 


JUN  1  0  1935 


Form  L-9-10ni-5 ,'28 


V      3  193S 
«^V  1  7  1939 


3     li^^u 


>^ 


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